Weiss Kreuz: Zerschlug
by Fire Falls
Summary: Weiss has lost Omi and gained a new member. Betrayal, team-up with the Schwartz, and two original characters. A gunfight. Death. And finally, a resolution! Y/O, K/OC, N/F and N/S references. Plus, a bit of A/S...XD
1. 1: Family Quarrel

**Disclaimers: **I own Tei. I own Agumi. I don't own Weiss, but if I did, I bet I'd have a lot more fun ; ). There's my schpiel.

**Weiss Season III**

**Episode One: **

**Family Quarrel**

_"What do you _mean_, 'our men never got through'?" yelled Hirhoto Agumi, slamming his hands down on his desk. The head of Kritiker, he was a very professional-looking man in a tidy dark gray business suit and a black tie. He'd been needing to get rid of the organization's vigilantes for almost three months now, but hadn't managed on account of the goddamned woman they'd picked up._

_Rex flinched. "The psychic. She must've sensed them coming and alerted the others. That's what those types _do_, you know."_

_"How? How was she able to? We gassed their house to knock them out! How did she sense them, how did they wake up and kill them if they were _unconscious_?"_

_"Listen, this next mission should break her. We found her father, and we'll send them to kill him. She'll lose it, and we can post our guards in to take out the boys and catch her. Then we won't have any more of those problems, okay?"_

_Agumi glared at her. Stupid blue-haired wench._

_Outside the door, a handsome, chocolate-haired young man took a deep, shuddering breath. They were planning to kill Weiss on account of some new girl? Or did it go deeper than that? He felt like his internal organs had melted, and he wanted to go and vomit, or shoot his boss with his crossbow…_

_But his mind never could stop working. Rex and Agumi couldn't be the only ones who knew about this, though. And Omi was one of the greatest hackers ever seen. That was what he did for Kritiker, so why couldn't he do it _to_ Kritiker? Before the blue-haired secretary could leave the room, Omi ducked into the men's room before sneaking back to his office. His computer sat there on his desk, waiting for his commands…_

Yoji Kudou sat on the couch in the house that included Koneko no Sumi Ie, the all-too-popular bishonen-run flower shop. He was too busy smoking a cigarette to care when his fellow assassin, Aya Fujimiya, came rushing down the stairs, followed closely by Persia's secretary, Rex. Ken Hidaka heard the noise through his bedroom door, apparently, and stuck his head out, the rest of his body following when he saw whom it was.

"Where's _Tei_?" sneered Rex, giving everyone a stare to make sure they knew exactly what she thought of the other woman as she lit a cigarette. Aya gave her a dirty look and opened the back door, stepping out into the alleyway and letting the door thump behind him. A moment later, he emerged with Tei behind him, the young woman's workout clothes soaked with sweat as she slid her blades into their thigh holsters.

"Yeah?" she said in a faintly breathless, husky voice that spoke of her half-American origins, a frown creasing her pale forehead as she looked around. "Mission, eh?"

Rex gave her an unpleasant look. "This is a particularly low-profile one. A major corporate businessman has been reportedly working closely with several drug kingpins, embezzling funds from his own companies to run the largest drug ring in Tokyo." She began passing information packets out to the four members of Weiss.

Ken paged through the papers, staring at the photograph provided. "He looks… kinda familiar. Any relatives?" he asked, looking up at the blue-haired secretary.

She shook her head. "His wife died almost twenty years ago in childbirth."

"And the kid?"

"A girl. He left her with his brother until she was six, then had her flown to Tokyo, where he raised her himself for two years."

"Just two years?" asked Yoji with a frown.

"She ran away from home. Never heard from afterwards. She is presumed dead, and shouldn't concern you."

Tei snorted in a derogatory fashion that only an American woman could. She hadn't even picked up her packet yet. "Yeah, yeah, so what's his name?"

"Mamoru Honokaa," snapped Rex, taking a drag from her cigarette and blowing the smoke in the black-haired girl's general direction. Of course it didn't make it across the room, but it was the thought that counted, right?

Yoji heard a sharp intake of breath from the corner and looked over to where Aya and Tei stood. The redhead was frowning faintly, looking at the photograph studiously, but the brunette woman had a faintly shocked expression on her face, her fists clenched. He raised his eyebrows, but withheld any comments for the time being.

"You're all in?"

"Hai, hai," muttered Ken absently, making a dismissive gesture in Rex's direction.

She rolled her eyes and blew smoke into his face, this time. "Good. We want him down tonight, because he's going to be overseeing a major shipment of cocaine tonight in a warehouse downtown. The address and timetable are among your files. Be there!"

Yoji shook his head as she left the room at a brisk walk, heels clattering along the stairs, and then turned to look at Tei. Blood was trickling down her fingers from her palms, where her nails were digging into the skin.

"You okay, there, Tei-kun?"

"I'm _fine_," she said tightly, snatching her packet and stalking into her room.

Ken looked at his reflection in the mirror and let a faint grin cross his lips. When the temperamental ninja girl had first joined the team, her cold demeanor and cynical attitude had reminded them of Aya from the early days. But as months passed, they learned to like her, certainly to trust her—and Ken, the metal-head of the group, gladly introduced her to his own music, which suited her personality. Dir en Grey never left her CD player nowadays. The leather-clad, combat-booted, knife-toting ninja girl had proven to be something of a foil for all of them, he reflected, and she had opened their eyes to a lot of things they'd never noticed.

Their work clothes had changed, as they were wont to do, when the team did. Omi had left Weiss to join Kritiker's higher ranks, and they'd completely lost touch with him. Ken, who'd always considered the younger man to be his best friend, at least after Kase—was particularly hurt. Barely a month after his disappearance, they'd met Tei and she had joined them, and soon after, their Victorian-influenced trenchcoats were exchanged for leather jackets and rock-style outfits.

Ken wore a bulletproof vest under a leather jacket and a pair of loose-fitting jeans over his combat boots. He kept his longish hair back under a black bandanna, and wore fingerless gloves with his bugnuks. He had to admit, when Tei first insisted that he wear combat boots ("Yeah, right, a kid with bugnuks on stealth?") he had resisted. But since she and Yoji were their stealth operatives, it made sense for him to wear heavy shoes. It gave him an edge in kicks, and on those rare occasions that he had to leap through windows (why was he _always_ the one jumping through windows, anyway?), they were especially handy.

"Aw, thinking about me, Ken-kun?" said a cynical voice from the doorway. Ninja Girl was leaning in a deceptively casual pose against the frame, not yet in her jacket, so the motion raised her shirt up and accented her nicely muscled stomach. Pretty as she might've been, Ken did not feel attracted to Tei, who was somewhere between trained killing machine and experiment gone wrong—who knew? He thought of her more as a sister, and that really helped, seeing as she was a mild telepath.

"How did you guess?" he asked dryly, turning to grin at her.

"The loving adoration in your eyes. Come on, move your ass," she said, turning and wandering into the main room, where she sat carelessly on the coffee table and began to scratch at it with one of her Sais.

"Hey! I paid for that stupid table! You can't cut it up like that!" yowled Aya, attempting to snatch the knife from her.

She yawned and avoided him deftly, slipping her Sai into its sheath. "I'd give you five yen for it. If I were drunk."

Aya muttered something about mouthy women and Yoji came out of his room, looking tired, but ready. The blonde's wardrobe was the least affected by the newcomer, retaining a bare chest and open jacket. 

"I can beat the crap outta you, dumbass," retorted Tei, 

Yoji yawned, flopping onto the couch. "Are we gonna go?"

Tei looked at him, sighing. "Get _up_ and we _will_, genius."

Aya, behind her, rolled his eyes and gave her a gentle, friendly push—as she was leaning over to smack Yoji one. She lost balance completely, reaching behind her to snatch his collar as she toppled over on Yoji. The three of them lay there, tangled up, for a moment, while Ken laughed.

"I feel left out, you guys!"

"Join—and—you—die!" grunted Yoji, who had the weight of a thin but muscular female and a tall, strong man combined on top of him.

"Get off, Aya!" grumbled Tei, shoving the redhead off of her and rolling to one knee on the floor. "See what happens when you're lazy, Yoji?"

Everyone grumbled for a moment, getting into battle-mode.

"Your car, Yoji. It's faster," said Aya, grabbing his katana and heading for the door. It was established that it was mission time, and now the leader was all business. He looked at Ken, who was helping the black-haired woman to her feet, despite her struggles. "You guys taking the bike?"

"Hai."

"Can't this piece of crap go any faster?" growled Tei into Ken's ear.

He sighed. She had never been so anxious to get to a mission before. "It wouldn't be very safe," he explained for the millionth time.

"Fuck safe."

"I know you didn't mean that."

"I know I did, moron," she growled.

Her tone was faintly more serious than it needed to be, and Ken suppressed a shiver as he sped up. Like he could put some distance between the two of them, although she was sort of attached to his vehicle. They pulled up to the warehouse before things could become any more awkward and hopped off the bike.

Tei, whose telepathy allowed her to sense where minds were, or to hone in on individual ones with concentration and 'listen in,' was an excellent tool for reconnaissance. Once inside the building, she could 'sense out' everyone in a two-hundred-foot radius. It was very, very handy.

The docking bay was where everything was supposed to go down. Ken and Yoji took a circle around the edge, killing off a few guards, while Aya went to the dock and cut off the supply line. (Pun intended?) Just as Honokaa realized what was going on, a silhouetted female form stepped in from the next room, a Sai in each hand with blood dripping from the blades. Silence fell as she stepped into the light, revealing pale skin, glowing purple eyes, and purple-streaked black hair.

"Did you miss me, _Honored Father_?" spat out the woman as she walked towards the businessman.

"T-Tesu?" he stammered. "Is that you?"

"I lost that name when I was eight and you said that Master Hajji could keep me if he paid you a bit," she replied, her tone bitter and menacing.

The men of Weiss had frozen, as had everyone else, around the 'Honored Father' part, and now they were staring at the pair of them in shock. So when she lunged suddenly, no one had time to react, much less the two bodyguards on either side of him. She yanked the blades from their throats as they fell to the floor, standing in front of her father—her _father_? – with burning hatred in her glowing amethyst eyes.

"You know, the irony is, if you'd bothered to treat me as a human being—as your daughter—I never would have run off to become a ninja. And I never would have received the training that made me what I am today. Do you know what I am today, Father? Do you know why I'm here?" she asked. Though her voice started calm and even, it broke into angry, half-hysterical yelling as she went on.

"To—to get revenge on me?" he whispered, terrified.

She laughed a harsh, bitter laugh. "I hadn't known a thing about you until I was hired to kill you, Daddy. I'm here to assassinate you." Her arms stretched open as she prepared her attack, but there they paused, hesitated, for a brief second.

Ken realized what she was about to do and he dove forward, but it was too late. The Sais flashed in, driving through either side of his neck until the blades stabbed into her opposite wrists. Ken's bugnuks grazed his back, causing no real harm, just added pain.

"Tesu—you—don't n—" he gasped, as the horrified woman yanked out her blades to catch him in her arms, staggering under the weight. She knelt down slowly, lowering him to the ground and shutting his eyes with her blood-covered fingers, streaking the red liquid across his face.

"What don't I know, Father?" she asked softly. Everything was silent as she knelt there, hair curtaining her pale face, and stared at her blood-soaked hands and wrists, which were illuminated by the eerie light in her eyes.

Aya was the first to go over to her, gathering her Sais up and kneeling behind her to slide them into their sheaths. He put his head over her shoulder and wrapped his arms around her abdomen, holding her and rocking her gently. She didn't react. Didn't move, didn't try to castrate or kill him. A few moments later, Ken and Yoji came over, to tell them it was time to go. The wail of a police siren got them all on their feet, but Tei seemed to have lost that sparkle of life, seemed to be almost catatonic as Yoji gripped her bleeding wrist and dragged her along to disappear in the shadows.

The purple glow behind her eyes faded as they rolled up into her head and she fainted, collapsing against Yoji, who caught her and scooped her up so that they could run off, cursing her blood loss.

"Son of a bitch! We left _witnesses_!" cried Ken, as he suddenly realized it.

In Yoji's arms, Tei stirred and moaned. "No… four… erased memories," she whispered, before dropping off again.

"Probably better she's out," muttered the blonde man, shifting her around a bit as they snuck to his car. "Aya, you coming with me or going with Ken?"

Aya wrinkled his nose at the motorbike. He _really_ hated that thing.

"Go with Tei," said Ken gently, patting his friend's shoulder. "She needs you more than I do."

Aya's cheeks got a tiny bit more color in them as he took the unconscious woman from Yoji and climbed into the passenger seat, setting her in his lap and putting his arms around her waist. Yoji looked over at them and smirked before he pressed his foot down on the gas pedal and they sped off.

Aya remembered when they'd first met Tei. She was a beautiful female ninja, trained in the most ancient assassin art in the world. The first time they saw her, she had been assigned to kill the same man they were assigned to—but for very different reasons. She'd been pumped full of drugs to the point where she didn't notice the gunshot wound in her shoulder until she couldn't use that arm. That was how Hidden Flame, the assassin team that Weiss had been sent to destroy barely a week later, had controlled her.

Tei had been recovered from the ruins when Aya had gone to free prisoners, only to discover the sole cell was occupied by the Mind Mistress of the Hidden Flame, shivering and sweating in withdrawal from the mind-control drug, her clothing torn and dirty with sweat, blood, and less savory bodily fluids, her wounded shoulder festering.

He'd felt an instant compassion for the broken woman and had slashed her chains off, taking her with them with a look that brooked no arguments. It had been difficult in the beginning. No one could sleep because her nightmares, which were some of the most hideous constructs known to man, got projected to everyone in the shop. The first night, when Yoji woke up convinced he'd been raped and tortured by half the men in Japan, there had been a horrible fight about whether or not they'd keep her. Aya pointed out that they couldn't just throw out someone who'd actually _lived_ those dreams, and Yoji had said fine, but he wasn't going to sleep there until things were under control.

That left Aya and Ken taking turns with caring for her. The first time Aya tried to hold her after she'd awakened from a nightmare, she had attacked him with blind panic. It was only the fact that she was so weak from her withdrawal and her infected wound that he was able to hold her down and calmly explain to her that he wanted to help her and make her better. 

The experience of bringing Tei back to life had been nearly as trying for him and Ken—and even Yoji, once the nightmares were brought under control—as it had for the young woman.

Now, as he watched her suddenly fragile form sleep, it occurred to him that he'd never really wanted to leave her side at any point, even at the worst times, and he tenderly brushed a few strands of her dark black-and-purple hair from her pale face. Her wrists had gotten stabbed fairly badly, but they'd bandaged them and the bleeding had stopped. She would be okay, physically.

He had laid her down on her bed, stripping the leather jacket off of her shoulders and removing the steel-toed boots, not particularly wanting to get kicked by those when she woke up. Her feet on their own were bad enough.

He cupped her face in his hands for a moment, lowering his lips towards hers… and he stopped, a breath away. She wasn't ready for it. She still answered her bedroom door with a Sai in hand, ready to kill anyone intent on hurting her in any way. And when she slept, she booby-trapped the door so that any intruder was knocked unconscious loudly enough to awaken her.

He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he didn't notice when her thick-lashed, black-lined eyes fluttered slightly, and cracked open the tiniest bit. But he did notice when a questioning hand moved up to his face, touching his cheek lightly.

"Aya? Is—is that you?" she murmured sleepily, her lips so close to his that he could feel an electric tingle as they moved.

"T-Tei? Are you, uh, awake?" he stammered, feeling his face flush under her palm.

"Am I?" she asked with a sleepy smile, her hand falling away limply. 

He swallowed down a lump of nervousness in his throat as she closed her eyes and reached up to touch his lips with her fingers, which, slender as they were, barely fit between their mouths. What was wrong with her? Usually, she slept away headaches like the one she probably had from erasing a bunch of memories. Her fuzzy, vague telepathy shouldn't have been able to do that. Sure, she'd slept for several hours, but she'd never done anything like that in the time he'd known her. By rights, she should be out for nearly two days.

Add to that the fact that she was smiling in a soft, sweet, almost loving way, and Aya was convinced that she must have been having some mild hallucinatory aftereffect from her exertions. He didn't know what to do—let it go on to who knew what, or get out of there as fast as he could.

"Aya, what's going on in there?" shouted a familiar voice, followed by a knock on the door.

The redhead fought down a wave of panic, even though Tei's eyes had closed again, and sat up, away from her and the warmth of their intimate pose.

"Is everything okay? You've been in there for almost two hours!"

Aya thought quickly as he looked at the girl, who seemed to have returned to her completely unconscious state, and lifted her body around to put it under the covers, yanking her leather assassin top away and struggling to pull a tee shirt on her.

"She's fine, Ken! I was just trying to dress her in something better for sleeping in…"

"Can I come in?" asked the younger man, opening the door a crack.

Aya knelt by the bed and flipped the covers aside just as the brunette walked in. "Do you think she's got on— Er… underwear?" he asked, trying not to blush. __

"She'd chafe in those leather pants!"

"Well, she's not a boy…"

Ken flushed and smacked his forehead. "You know, I never wanted to think about Tei's underwear. Can't we just leave the pants on her?"

"No! She'll be uncomfortable!"

The former athlete rolled his eyes. "I'll turn around, you check, and then I'll run out of the room at top speed?"

Though that would have suited Aya just fine, he pretended to grumble. "Why do I always have to take care of her when it comes to stuff like this?"

Ken smirked. An expression Aya hadn't thought he possessed. "Because _you_ enjoy it, whereas _I_ just enjoy teasing you two about it."

"Guess what I just learned from the Internet, Ken?"

"I really would rather not hear about your porn sites, Aya," sighed the other man as he walked towards the door.

Aya held out his hand and extended his middle finger. "It's American for 'fuck you.'"

Yoji chose that minute to walk by and stop, staring at them. He shook his head, some of his growing-out blonde hair falling into his eyes. "You know, what goes on behind closed doors is really not what we want you to tell us about, Aya. Especially considering that, since we all know Tei, she'd castrate us for listening to your kinky habits."

Aya threw his hands up in disgust. "Just go away, both of you! I'll take care of our wounded, sleeping psychic while you two talk about… whatever it is you talk about! Obviously, I'm the only responsible one here!"

A groan from the bed behind him made everyone stop and turn. Tei was attempting to sit up, clutching her head in one hand.

"That's _my_ tee shirt! Tei-kun, you're not supposed to take my shirts without asking!" yowled Ken, pointing at the Dir en Grey logo that blazed across her chest.

She made the same gesture at him that Aya had made a moment before, wincing at the light from the doorway.

"Did I mention I took an enhancer before I left yesterday?" she muttered to no one in particular. She closed her eyes and flopped back on the bed. "Who's visiting us?"

Ken and Yoji exchanged looks.

"What visitors?"

Review. Or don't. Either way. I'd like feedback. But I'm too apathetic to make more of an effort than this.


	2. 2: Fight or Flight

**Disclaimers: **I own Tei and Miry. The rest of Weiss (and Schwartz) are not mine, much as I wish they were.

**Warnings: **swearing, some shonen-ai-ish stuff…. Errr… read to comprehend

**Weiss Season III**

**Episode Two:**

**Fight or Flight**

Ken rushed to the door of the shop, but no one was there, so he came thudding back downstairs to where Tei was smacking Aya around as he tried to help her to the couch. Yoji stood aside, watching them and laughing.

"You could help, you know!" grunted the redhead irritably as Tei tried to break his arm. She was still pretty weak, though, from blood loss if nothing else, and all she really did was end up giving him a really bad Indian Rub.

Yoji grinned. "No thanks. I like this angle better than yours…"He looked up as he saw Ken. "Anyone there?"

The brunette shook his head. "Street's empty. I think Tei may have been wrong, for once."

A series of taps came from the back door and the young woman gave him one of her most cynical smirks. Ken sighed and returned it as he opened the back door a fraction of an inch, gripping his gun against his leg, just in case.

A familiar pair of blue eyes met his, set in a handsome face that had grown up so much in the months since he'd last seen it. He tried not to gasp.

"Omi?"

"Yes, Ken-kun, it's me…. but can you let me in, please? This is important." The younger man sounded so hurried, so… desperate.

"Of course I can! It's so good to have you back!" he cried, opening the door and giving his old friend a quick hug. He froze, however, at the sight of the foursome standing a few feet behind Omi. "The—the Schwartz?"

A series of very loud curses erupted behind him and Yoji came over, his own gun at the ready. Omi paled.

"Wait. There's a lot of explaining to be done, you guys, and they're part of it," he said, pushing some chocolate brown hair from his eyes.

"Like _hell_!" shouted Tei, right in Ken's ear. He winced and leaned away from her. "Those guys come in here and I'll kill every one of them! _Especially_ the German."

Farfarello, the insane silver-haired Irishman, crossed his arms and smirked. "Killing Schuldig will make God happy. I can't let you do that."

"Fuck God!" she shouted at him, nearly falling over. The air seemed to catch her before she could hit the pavement, and then it lifted her to her feet.

"You're welcome," said a calm, quiet voice. The telekinetic boy stepped forward, dark eyes unfeeling as always.

Tei glared at him and Aya chose that moment to haul her away from the door.

"I guess you can come in, but if this is a set-up…" said Ken, looking at the Schwartz dubiously.

"If it were a set-up, you'd already be dead," said the precognitive American leader with his usual unpleasant smirk, as he pushed his way inside.

Yoji gripped his gun a bit tighter and looked down at the shorter Omi. "I never thought you'd be fraternizing with the enemy, Omi," he said, giving the younger man a cold look. Omi looked away, hurt, and bit his lip as everyone stepped inside.

"Okay, Omi, I don't think you and Tei have met," said Ken awkwardly.

The young woman crossed her arms over her chest and scowled. "I'm Tei. Piss me off and I'll kick you so hard your testicles will shootout of your nose."

Everyone blanched at that, except possibly Farfarello. Sex and pleasure weren't priorities for him, and he couldn't feel pain, so it didn't matter. Schuldig and Yoji both looked like they were going to be sick.

"I, uh, read your file at Kritiker… they don't have much on you, but I know a little bit. You're a ninja, right?" asked Omi nervously.

She shook her head, black and purple hair rippling. "I trained as one, but they never gave me the title because I'm a woman."

"Oh. But you are a psychic?"

"Not really. Not much more than the average person," she said, quirking the corner of her mouth upwards mockingly. Her weird, glowing eyes flickered a bit. "Of course, enhancer drugs do make me stronger…"

"Shall we get to business?" asked Crawford, folding his arms and staring around. He'd slicked back his black hair, but had trimmed it at the neck so it lacked the longish strands poking out behind his ears, and was wearing a Bond-esque suit with a greenish tie. Everyone looked at him, and Weiss glowered a bit.

"Yeah, Omi, why are you here with Schwartz?" asked Aya, looking at Crawford menacingly as he asked the question.

Omi took a deep breath. "Your last mission was a load of crap, guys. Kritiker was trying to get you killed, or at least to get rid of Tei, whom they regard as the most dangerous member of Weiss."

Ken felt his stomach coil. "What the hell are you talking about?" he cried, resisting the urge to go straight to Kritiker HQ and tear open everyone there with his claw.

Tei chuckled mirthlessly. "Aya's just as dangerous as me, and so is Yoji. Ken, too, when he's not being a jackass and letting his temper get to him," she said in a dull, cool voice.

Omi blinked. He'd never thought of his teammates as a danger to his person, but he couldn't help thinking that woman wouldn't hesitate to slit his throat if she had to. "Anyway, Kritiker wants to rid themselves of you. Their new head, Hirhoto Agumi—"

"_Agumi_?" demanded Yoji, jumping up from where he'd been leaning on the armrest of the sofa and knocking a lamp over. Omi flinched, at the yelling or the crash that ensued, it didn't matter. "Did you say _Agumi_?"

Aya looked at him curiously, raising an eyebrow. "What about him?"

Yoji clenched his fists and gritted his teeth, green eyes blazing with fury. "That bastard was a lawyer back when I was an investigator—I arrested a murderer and rapist and he got the sick fuck off. Next time I came across that guy, I shot him, and it turns out he's Agumi's brother…"

"_What_?"

The blonde nodded tersely. Schuldig raised a red brow lazily as he dropped bonelessly into an easy chair, and Crawford sighed. Everyone else stared in shock.

"You mean—he's got a grudge against you?" asked Ken after a long time.

"Good reasoning, there, Sherlock," muttered Nagi. Ken gave him a murderous look and the telekinetic smirked.

"Where does he live? I'll kill him myself! He's gotten so many psychos into the streets, it's not funny."

"It's never funny when psychos get loose in the streets," pointed out Farfarello reasonably, making the Weiss members blink. Then he grinned. "Except when they hurt God."

Schu rolled his eyes. "Whatever the case, he wants your asses on a platter."

"Yeah? And where do _you_ come in? Something tells me it's not altruism that's motivating you," snapped Tei, snatching the cigarette he'd put between his lips before he could light it.

"That's mine," said the telepath coldly. She took his lighter, too, and lit up, giving him a 'come-take-it-if-you-want-me-to-skewer-your-intestines' look.

Crawford rolled his eyes at their idiocy. He knew Schuldig was a jackass, but having a petty fight with someone over a cigarette should've been below him. "We're here because Kritiker is playing us, too. They hired us to grab you and analyze you all for psychic abilities, then kill anyone without them and give them the psychics. What they didn't mention was that they planned to gas us and take _us_ for testing, too." He sniffed the last part as though the fact that they'd thought they could take him was offensive.

"So you decided to warn us?" Ken asked sarcastically.

Omi stood up, intervening. "Listen. They've got an arsenal of psychic drugs that they can use to control any psychic. The stronger you are, the easier it is to control you. Which is why, for once, the Schwartz's powers are a hindrance, rather than an asset. So they need our help as much as we need theirs. We've got a common enemy, which should make us allies."

"An alliance with a snake could hardly be considered intelligent," snapped Aya.

"Well, you sure are sticking up for your new _buddies_," sneered Yoji at the same time, acidic contempt clinging to his voice.

Omi shivered and tried to ignore the blonde's words. "Is there a choice?"

"Yeah," said Ken, slamming his fist into his hand threateningly, "We could go down there and beat their asses!"

Nagi snorted sarcastically. "You realize they expect you to do that? They're actually surprised that you haven't figured it out yet. Bakas."

Aya proudly displayed his new American gesture, prompting a smirk from Crawford. "You know, we only ever see one person. And we're not mind-readers, baka."

"She is." The telekinetic pointed at Tei, who was glowering at every member of Schwartz she could fit into her frame of vision.

"Not a strong one," she said absently. "But I am strong enough to know that neither Yoji nor Mastermind are wearing underwear right now."

Everyone startled at this and edged away from the two who had been named, while the woman smirked. Omi glanced at Yoji, forcefully shoving his thoughts _away_ from what came to mind at the mention of the blonde's lack of underwear. He didn't notice Schuldig smirking at him.

"Anyway," continued the ninja, "The only reason anyone knows I'm psychic is because people stuck needles into me and tested me out when I was a kid. Anyone of Weiss could also be psychic, but we just never noticed."

Crawford nodded, smirking. "As a matter of fact, we should get to that issue."

Omi blinked. "What? You never mentioned this to me," he said, eyes widening.

Schu shrugged. "You didn't ask. If you'd thought to, though, we wouldn't have been able to lie to you, _libeling_, because you would've noticed."

"What—what do you mean?"

"Ah, Bombay, so naïve. You're an empath. Didn't you ever notice?"

Omi sat down heavily on the coffee table, too shocked to do anything else. Aya glared at Schuldig.

"You're full of shit, Mastermind," the redheaded swordsman growled.

An orange eyebrow arched. "Am I?" he asked, leaning forward with his lighter and igniting Aya's pants. The swordsman jumped, as his pant-leg went up in flames, and everyone gasped. "Put it out, Abyssinian."

Aya bared his teeth at the other man, slapping at his leg. "I'm _trying_, dickhead."

"Use your _thoughts_," smirked Schuldig.

Aya actually stopped stamping and jumping around to roll his eyes and glare at the other redhead. "You have _got_ to be making a bad joke," he said.

"Are you experiencing pain?" The German decided to try a different tactic. Omi suddenly noticed one of his former teammates was on fire and leapt up from the coffee table with an incoherent shout.

Aya blinked. "Uh…"

"My point exactly. Now, concentrate on the fire and _tell_ it to snuff," commanded Schu. He took out a new cigarette and lit it, inhaling lazily.

"Fine," snapped the swordsman. He gritted his teeth, eyes closing slightly as he concentrated, and the flames died down slowly. Every man of Weiss stared, shocked. Aya's skin, under the charred bits of pant-leg was unscathed. Sooty, but unscathed.

Schuldig offered one of his finest shit-eating grins. "Told you so."

"This is too weird," muttered Ken, staring at his teammates. He dropped some faintly smoldering fabric from his own hand, not noticing that his skin was in the same condition as his teammate's.

Aya shrugged. "If Tei can be psychic, why can't I?"

"Because you're _Aya_. That's just not your thing!"

"Why are we wasting our time here?" demanded Yoji suddenly. "We should be making a plan to go get Agumi."

Nagi snorted rudely. "You go left, I'll go right, and we can tear him limb from limb, how about it, Balinese?"

The blonde man gave him a venomous look. "What, are we supposed to run? Like little _girls_?" he snarled. He glanced at Tei. "Uh, no offense."

Omi's pocket began to ring in that electronic cell-phone ring that one heard all the time in large cities like Tokyo. He pulled out his phone and answered it, moving into the kitchen as he spoke.

"You know, we could try doing this with a bit of sense. A good plan will take planning. But then, you wouldn't know that, would you?" sneered Crawford.

Yoji seethed. "Or I could shoot you and kick you all out of my house!"

"I wouldn't recommend that," said Nagi quietly.

"I don't recall saying I gave a shit what you recommend!" shouted the blonde.

Tei grabbed her teammate's wrist. "Hey, Yoji, how about we give them a try? Without a good strategy, we're dead. This is _Kritiker_, after all," she said in her dull voice.

He turned on her. "You mean you're going to side with _them_?" he asked incredulously.

She rolled her eyes. "You need to suck it up. Or else kiss your ass good-bye. And I'm not siding with anyone. I side with my knives. You should know that by now."

Omi stepped out of the kitchen, his face pale. "We need to go," he said tersely.

"What? When?" asked Ken.

"What the hell is going on?" Aya demanded.

"Get your things. Kritiker is coming, and Miry can't do anything to stop them…" replied Omi, reaching under his jacket to check the two guns that none of Weiss had noticed he had there.

"What about Tei?" asked Aya, who had hauled the young woman to her feet and had a hand around her waist, to her obvious annoyance.

"I'm fine," she hissed.

"You can't even stand on your own; how do you expect to fight?"

Omi looked at her. "Carry her. We're leaving."

Amidst much grumbling and loud bitching from Yoji and Ken, Weiss grabbed duffels of clothing, their weapons, and a couple other necessities. They piled into their cars and began to drive through Tokyo, following Omi.

Somehow, Yoji and Schuldig had managed to get into the archer's car, much to his displeasure. Yoji was a cold, furious force beside him, and Schuldig kept smirking or outright grinning at the tension between the two. Omi pressed harder on the accelerator, hoping to get there faster. He skidded to a stop as flames suddenly shot up before him in the road, the car fishtailing around and halting so close that Yoji could've rolled down his window and stuck his hand into them. The others screeched to stops in a similar manner.

"Shit!" cried Yoji. "What's going on?"

Omi opened his door and leapt out of the car, when flames suddenly sprang up before him, encircling his car and the other ones closely enough that they couldn't get out without being burned. Schuldig reached forward and smacked Omi's arm.

"Look," he said, pointing out the window, across the wall of flame. A series of angered swat-agents in black were emerging from the shadows, cursing and pointing at the fire. Omi frowned. This seemed like just the sort of thing Miry would do, but…

"That's a bunch of Kritiker agents! How did they know we'd be here?" cried Yoji.

Schuldig closed his eyes for a moment. "Nagi is doing his best to get us out of this, but we don't have much time. The minute those flames hit the gas tank…"

"Fuck!" hissed Omi. "Can you do anything? Like seeing who's behind this at least?"

The telepath nodded and his eyes closed. A few seconds later, they opened, looking a bit dazed. "There's a pyro here. What Aya is, only a _lot_ stronger. She's trying to help us, but she doesn't want to kill anyone." He smirked. "Not a lot of help. As long as she holds back the fire around _us_, we won't die, but then we've got a horde of Kritker agents on our ass."

"Looks like your _partner_ set us up, Omi," growled Yoji, slamming his fist angrily against the window.

"My partner would never do anything like that!" snapped Omi, resisting the urge to slug the older man. Schu grinned faintly.

"What's her name, anyway? This girl isn't even Japanese, and she's thinking in half a dozen languages at once…" tried the German.

"Her name's Miry… Miriam Bennet-Smith. And she's a psychic, and a lingual genius," replied Omi softly.

Yoji grunted, defeated. Schuldig smiled.

_"One point for the Bombay kitten,"_ purred the German's voice in his thoughts.

"You mean she's a pyro? _Miry_ creates fires?" pressed the archer.

The telepath nodded and absently lit a fresh cigarette. "And she's damned powerful. To create the fires is one thing, but to control _all_ of them? That takes amazing strength and skill." He smirked. "I, for one, can't wait to meet her…"

Omi narrowed his eyes. "Not a chance in hell."

"Oh, come now, surely you can't be as selfish as that? Won't you share with me?"

Yoji turned and glared at the redhead. "Would you please shut up? We're still trapped in a car, surrounded by fire, and pyro or no pyro, I don't want my dying moments filled with the sound of your obnoxious voice!"

Schuldig smirked as, a moment later, the fire around their car died out. Or rather, it snuffed instantly. Yoji made an obscene gesture and leapt out of the car, gun in hand. A circle of flame surrounded the agents, who were growing panicked and furious, and he wasted no time in shooting one of them.

"Stop that!" screamed a feminine voice. The fire flickered and lapped closer, and a series of multilingual curses erupted from the shadows. "Drop your weapons, Kritiker!" cried the voice. Squinting, Omi thought he could make out a female figure, black on black, against the wall of an alley.

"Hell no!" shouted Yoji, plugging another guy. A moment later, a slim, chocolate-haired man crashed into him, tackling him to the ground. "What the _fuck_? Omi, what're you doing!"

"She told you to stop!" yelled Omi, wrestling with his once-teammate. The gun had skittered off, out of reach. "Don't kill them!"

Yoji punched the younger man in the stomach, making Omi gasp and drive the heel of his hand into the blonde's diaphragm. An angry fist connected with the archer's jaw and his head snapped back. Yoji shoved him over and grabbed him by the shoulders; shaking him and making his head knock against the asphalt of the road.

"What the fuck is wrong with you? You're a traitor! We don't need you anymore, and we sure as hell don't want you! Why'd you come back, anyway?" screamed the blonde.

"I came back to save your asses! And you're the only one who seems bothered by it! What the fuck is _your_ problem?" Omi retaliated, gripping his old friend around the throat and trying to throw him off. Their position was certainly of two combatants, but Yoji's weight was pressed right into his hips in an uncomfortable pressure. Or maybe it was _too_ comfortable.

"You abandoned us! You just walked out, and you expect us to greet you with open arms? You showed up at our doorstep with the _Schwartz_, for fuck's sake! Do you really have to ask?" snarled Yoji.

"Hey!" shouted the woman in the shadows. "Anyone have an idea of how to disable these guys—_temporarily_?"

Omi and Yoji didn't hear her. They didn't want to; they were too absorbed in their own problems. Schuldig did, and he cast his mind out, drawing on the strength of Nagi, who stepped up next to him and put a hand on the German's shoulder to help. Together, their power was enough to erase the past fifteen minutes from the agents' memories, gracelessly enough that they were left unconscious at the end.

Omi twisted his elbow up to catch Yoji in the cheekbone, whacking him hard enough to overbalance him. With that advantage, he drove his knee around and to the side, forcing them to roll. Unfortunately, his pulled punch left the blonde time to recover and keep their tumble going, each one grappling for the upper hand.

"_Get off him_!" yelled an angry voice, and suddenly Omi, who was on top for the moment, felt himself lifted off the ground by the unpleasantly familiar grasp of Nagi's telekinesis. Yoji sat up, glaring hatefully, but he was pinned to the ground. He had a trickle of blood coming from his mouth where he'd apparently bit his tongue, and his hair was mussed, face and arms covered with scratches and small scrapes from the pavement. Basically, he wasn't injured.

"Let me go!" roared Yoji, struggling against the youngest Schwartz's psychic hold. Nagi smirked and shook his head.

The woman who'd been in the shadows, a tall figure dressed in all black, hair hidden under a stocking cap and face smeared with black paint, crouched in front of him.

"Listen, mister, if you're gonna act like a kid, I have no problem stickin' you in diapers and strappin' you to a carseat, got it? I don't care who the hell you are, you need to get a little bit of fuckin' perspective," she said, her words a scathing, burning blow. The blonde man stared at her, taken aback, and then actually looked away, downwards, in… shame? Yoji Kudou, _ashamed_?

She stood and turned around, eyes widening when she saw it was Omi dangling in midair and struggling in vain. With a yank, her cap was off, flying to the side and letting shoulder-length gold-streaked red hair tumble down like liquid flame. She leapt up and onto the hovering Omi, wrapping her arms around him tightly.

"You _baka_! I can't believe you! I was so worried about you guys! I didn't realize they'd tapped my phone until a bunch of those gods-damned swats walked by talking about an ambush! Oh, gods, I was worried I'd be too late! I hate you! Don't ever, _ever_ scare me like that again, Omittchi!" she cried, in a rush. She hugged him tightly and kissed his cheek. He yelped and flinched away.

"Miry-kun! Owww, you burned me!" he said, easing his own embrace to move his skin away from hers.

"Oh, shit! I'm sorry, Omi-kun!" she gasped, tilting his head sideways with a leather-gloved hand. "Lemme see it…"

"Ouch. Itai. Miry, you're a sadist!" He sniffed at her shoulder. "Have you been _smoking_? You said you'd quit!"

Schuldig grinned. "I knew I'd like this one."

Farf gave him a sidelong glance. "You can't even touch her. How do you plan to play with something you can't touch?"

Crawford sighed as Nagi let the pair lower to the ground. "We need to get moving. You're little lovers' reunion can wait," he said impatiently.

Miry blinked, though the motion was hard to detect, seeing as her face was painted black. "Lovers?"

Omi snorted. "Miry?"

Yoji stood up with a silent hand from Aya, crossing his arms and looking at them angrily.

"Whatever you are, we need to go. Everyone get back in the cars and start driving, okay?" Crawford snapped.

"Dude, who shoved a pole up your ass?" muttered the pyro in English, eying the American pre-cog. Then she spoke up to everyone. "Hey! Wait, before you do anything, you should know they've got their place built up like there's a damn siege, okay? You guys won't be getting past them anytime soon."

Review. Or don't. Feedback is appreciated. This is a re-do of my other chapter 2, after complaints about Tei…

**Upcoming: **They go… camping? People chat, and we find out more about psychic Weiss….


	3. 3: The 'Enchanted' Forest

**Warnings: **much more shonen-ai implications, yaoi references, lots of swearing, and Farfarello hunting deer. Scary, huh?

**Weiss Season III**

**Episode Three:**

**The 'Enchanted' Forest**

Yoji sneered at her. "We're professionals."

She took a step towards him, eyes flashing. "Yeah, well, so are they, pretty boy! So until we've hacked out their plans, you need to sit down and shut up!"

Tei covered her mouth and made a coughing noise. Ken glared at the newcomer defensively. Who the hell was she to talk to them like that? Farfarello, Nagi, and Aya eyed her impassively, Crawford appreciatively, and Schuldig appreciatively, though in a very different way than his teammate. Yoji was furious and humiliated, and Omi felt bad for him. Even if the older man's punch was already forming quite a bruise on his jawbone.

"Alright. Let's go," said Aya, turning and walking back to his car. Ken and Tei followed him, and the Schwartz members (except Schuldig) went to their car. Yoji gave both Omi and Miry a very near impression of Aya's 'Shi-ne Glare,' before getting into the backseat of the car.

Schuldig climbed in on the other side, looking out the window at Omi and Miry.

"She's something, isn't she?" he purred, playing on Yoji's jealous, embarrassed fury.

"I don't care what she is to him. He's not part of our team anymore, and I don't want anything to do with him!" hissed the blonde.

"Oh, but I'm sure you'd like to do _something_ with him," smirked Schu, sending a vague image of the two men kissing furiously, naked, pressed against a wall.

Yoji glared at him. "Stay out of my head, Mastermind, or I'll cut yours off!"

Omi got into the drivers' seat, and Miry into the passenger side. The boy sighed and started the car, cutting off the argument between Schuldig and Yoji quite effectively.

"As a service to humanity, I'm not letting Miry drive," he said, with a faint grin.

The girl glowered at him. "Bite me, Omi. I'm not driving because I don't have a Japanese drivers' license," she grumbled.

"And thank God for that!" said Omi cheerfully.

"I'll set you on fire if you don't shut up, genki-boy."

Schu smirked. "Why don't you have a Japanese license? Don't you know how to drive?" he asked, pleasantly enough. Especially considering it was Schuldig.

"I have a license, it's just an American license. Everyone drives on the wrong side of the road over here," she complained.

Yoji snorted. "Gaijin."

"Yeah, but I'm a citizen of the most economically powerful country on earth."

"And I'm a citizen of the second most powerful country. What's your point?" snapped the blonde irritably.

"And people think _I_ have a bad temper. You know, I think you were much cuter from a distance," she replied, running a hand absently through her tousled hair.

Startled, the blonde squinted at her. "Who are you?"

"Miriam Bennet-Smith. Miry for short," she answered. "Who're you two?"

"I'm Yoji Kudou…" said the Japanese man.

"And I am Schuldig," said the red-haired telepath, smiling hungrily at her.

"The Guilty One, eh?" Her next words were in German, a language that Omi and Yoji knew precious little of, but the other man grinned and they began conversing in that language, laughing.

"Well, _they_ certainly hit it off," muttered Yoji, eyeing the pair as they chattered away. "Now I _know_ she's not to be trusted."

"And now I know you don't know shit, Yoji," said Omi, jumping to her defense. "If you knew Miry like I do, you'd know that she's a lot better of a person than any one of us. She's _clean_. Pure. Innocent."

Schu and Miry were too preoccupied to hear them, which was best.

"She's not your lover, then what is she? Your fuck-buddy? And you just happen to be friends, too? Even _I_ wouldn't sink that low, Omi," sneered the older man, staring cruelly into the rearview mirror at Omi's face.

"You really don't know anything, do you?" laughed the boy, bitterly. "There is nothing like that between us, _at all_."

At that moment, Miry suddenly turned. "Hey, Omittchi, I know you took a bag of your stuff, so when I left, I burned our apartment. Hope you won't miss the piece of crap," she said, with cheery sarcasm, before turning back to her new friend.

"You share an apartment with her? Share a bed, too, I bet. And wouldn't touch that sweet, innocent sleeping beauty, would you?" mocked Yoji.

Omi's hackles rose. "We are _not_ like that! Not that it's _any_ of your goddamned business!"

"Whatever you say, little bitch."

"Fuck you, Yoji. You're such a prick. You know, you're such a prick that I left to get away from you! I left because you're such a fucking prick!" yelled Omi, face flushing with rage.

The older man's green eyes widened for a moment, then narrowed. "Left and went and found yourself some dominatrix pyro who burns the place when you're done, huh?"

Omi didn't have time to respond as Miry slammed her fist straight into Yoji's face.

"Sweetheart, Omi's right. You _are_ a prick," she said. She looked at Omi. "Don't bother with him. Gods, I never knew you had such bad taste in men…"

Schu smirked and the girl winked at him.

Yoji was too stunned to reply, and the rest of the ride was silent, save for the soft German chatter of two passengers.

Crawford sighed, making Nagi look up from his laptop in the passenger seat.

"What is it, Crawford-sama?" asked the young man in his quiet, calm voice.

"Nothing, Naoe. Nothing."

The telekinetic smirked and exchanged glances with Farfarello in the rearview mirror. "Right. I'm sure."

The American man's eyes narrowed. "You'd do well to respect your leader, Prodigy."

Nagi rolled his eyes. "I'm a bit too old to call 'Prodigy,'" he responded.

"You're eighteen. Barely an adult."

Farfarello smirked in the backseat. "Was Nagi ever a child?"

Crawford glared, defeated.

The young man beside him shrugged. "If you don't want to tell us what's wrong with you, that's fine. Just don't take it out on us. Remember your rules: if you keep it in, you keep it _all_ in."

The pre-cog gritted his teeth. Damn that boy! If only he hadn't been quite so perfectly attentive. In his own, odd, detached way.

Farf grinned. "Good work, Chibi Brad," he chuckled.

"If you must know, I was wondering why I didn't see that ambush coming," Crawford bit off, gripping the steering wheel a bit tighter. "Or why I didn't see any sign of that woman showing up."

"The pyro?" asked Nagi quietly, shutting his laptop. Great, a conversation.

"Yes, the pyrokinetic one. Omi's lover," snapped the American.

Farfarello grinned again, pausing from his incessant toying with his knife to look up. "Jealous, Crawford?"

The Schwartz leader's teeth clenched. "_No_, I am not jealous. Sex is not important right now. Our survival _is_, and the fact that my gift appears muddled is a sign that Kritker may have more on us that we realize."

Nagi frowned. "You have a point. Should we bring this up when we stop?"

Crawford shook his head. "No. If Weiss sees weakness in us, they could decide to kill us while we sleep. I would rather they fear us in ignorance."

Ken leaned his head back against his seat, thinking. A frown creased his brows and Tei's eyes snapped over to him from her position at the wheel.

"Thinking about that pyro friend of Omi's?" she asked in a monotone.

He started and glared at her. "Stay out of my head, Tei."

She shrugged. "Stay out of mine."

Aya raised his eyes up from their closed position to lock with Ken's in the mirror. "How _did_ you survive that fire of Kase's?" he asked quietly.

Ken's eyes widened. "I—I don't know. I was knocked out, and—when I came to, everything around me was burned…"

The redhead smirked. "Looks like I'm not the only pyro in Weiss, huh?"

"You mean…?"

Tei nodded slightly. "It does explain a lot. Means it falls to you two to restrain her if she's out of control… Or Schwartz. Who gives a shit if they burn alive from touching her? You're the only ones that can _touch_ her…"

Ken's temper flared. "Hey! Shut up, Tei!" he yelled, though a faint nervous sweat broke out on his forehead.

She smirked. "So, Aya, any idea where Crawford and Omi are leading us?"

They stopped, after several driver switches, around dawn, on top of Mount Fuji. There, they made a pathetic camp to rest at, with a fire tended by Miry. To Ken's eyes, it seemed that she was already quite attached to Schuldig, and he did _not_ want to be near her while she was conversing with a telepath.

Tei slept so close to the fire that her skin glistened with a layer of sweat, with a Sai in her hand and another beneath her 'pillow' (a crumpled up coat). Aya slept as near to her as she would let him, which meant they both collapsed after a long argument. Ken looked on at his friends sadly for a moment, before glancing up to see Farfarello watching them with a faintly mad gleam to his amber-gold eye.

Nagi was curled up, looking almost innocent in sleep, next to the Irish psycho. Crawford, on the other side of the boy, gave Farfarello a look before shutting his eyes slightly. After a moment, the silver-haired man slept as well. Feeling a bit more at ease, Ken turned to see that Yoji was sleeping by the edge of their campsite, looking angry and uneasy, tossing and turning. Omi was curled up with his head in Miry's lap, her fingers absently stroking the archer's chocolate hair as her other hand wiped the black paint from her face with a damp cloth. Surprisingly, she was rather pretty, in an exotic, Western way. And blonde. Her hair was blonde now, with fire-red streaks, as opposed to the other way around.

Schuldig looked up at the athlete, jade eyes flashing faintly, and smirked. After a moment, the pyro beside him followed suit, blinking.

"Why don't you come sit here with us if you're not sleepy?" she offered, motioning him over with her rag.

He frowned. "How did you meet Omi, anyway?" he asked warily, walking over slowly.

She grinned. "Same apartment building. We were across the hall from each other, and then it turned out we worked for the same Nazis, when I got transferred to bein' his secretary." Her pronunciation at the end of words was deliberately sloppy, but only faintly so, making her American-ness all the more apparent.

"You're just a secretary?"

She snorted. "Yeah. Damn troublesome, too. Always emailin' him Internet quizzes and obnoxious shit like that. Pissed off our superiors, but no one can win an argument with me, so…" She quirked the corner of her mouth up and let her voice trail off.

"Okay…"

Schuldig sighed and pulled a flask from his inside jacket pocket, taking a swig. Immediately, the woman beside him held out her hand, demanding a sip of her own.

"Uh, is that a good idea?" asked Ken, sitting down. "You might, like, explode…"

She laughed. "Ah, sweetie, I'm immune to explosions. Well, not the concussive force, or the debris, but the dangerous bit…"

Schu shook his head and stuffed it back in his jacket, earning a glare from his new friend. Ken shook his head as well, but for a different reason. This girl obviously had little regard for her personal safety. A daredevil, probably a show-off, and basically what he'd come to think of as the cliché of Americans.

"Tell us, Ken, have you ever done something just for the rush of it?" said Schuldig with a smirk.

The brunette man scowled. "When I was younger, yeah."

"And how old are you, anyway?" persisted the telepath.

"Twenty-two," he said, gritting his teeth.

"I'm twenty-five," smiled Schu. "About the age my mother expected me to marry…" He sighed and exchanged glances with Miry, who burst out laughing as she tried to scrape paint from the area beneath her eyes.

"What has that got to do with anything I'd give a shit about?" demanded Ken, exasperated. He crossed his arms.

The German shrugged. "Just trying to get to know you better, is all. You ride a motorcycle, right?"

The pyro beside him tensed, her hand clenching faintly around the cloth. "Bikes are dangerous," she said tersely. Schuldig put a hand on her shoulder, comforting.

Ken sighed. "Yes, I've crashed on mine before. Your point?"

"Everyone does foolish things. Especially when they're young. Miry, you are… eighteen? Is that right?"

She nodded. "Eighteen going on twelve-year-old boy or fifty-something singleton, I can't decide," she answered sarcastically.

Ken raised a brow. "You mean… you're not with Omi?"

She laughed. "You do realize he's gay, right?"

The soccer player blinked. No, he hadn't realized that. He'd just assumed that any man so close to a girl as pretty and straightforward and unique as Miry would at least _try_ to get into her pants. It hadn't occurred to him that Omi wouldn't, because Omi wasn't interested in women.

"Surprised?" asked Schu with an unpleasant smile.

Ken swallowed. He didn't like that look. Something bad was coming; he knew it. "I hadn't figured Omi for that type…" he confessed.

Miry smiled. "We've slept in the same bed for going on four months now, and believe me when I say it didn't go past sleepin'."

"Uh…"

Schuldig chuckled. "Could you trust _Ken_ here like that?" he asked her, eyes gleaming nastily.

She flushed and swatted at his head. Ken, too flushed and growled, "Shut _up_!"

The German's grin widened rottenly. "Tension, tension. And you two _just_ met!"

"Slut," muttered the pyro wryly, pulling out a cigarette and holding her index finger up to it, a tiny flame emitting from her fingertip. "Not everyone is like you, ya know. Some of us are embarrassed by your hentai comments."

Looking like the Cheshire cat from _Alice In Wonderland_, Schuldig said, "Judging by the stream of thoughts and images in _both_ your minds, you two aren't."

The flame on her fingertip flared and she pointed at his nose. "You. Out. Of. Head."

Ken, wishing he could actually create fires, gave a Shi-ne Glare that said 'same over here.'

"Oh, you two are such dullards. How am I to have any fun?" complained the telepath.

Miry pointed at Omi, then over at Yoji. Ken nearly fainted. Yes, he was utterly and completely blind. He'd never noticed it. Their fight was about more than just Weiss. They'd started throwing punches because of their own, _personal_ issues.

Schuldig chuckled. "You're a vicious bitch, aren't you?"

She shrugged and leaned back against the log they sat before. "You could say that."

Ken watched reached out cautiously and touched her on the nose. Her eyes crossed as she looked at his finger, and a small flush lined across both their noses.

"Uh, sorry. I just wanted to see if touching your skin would burn me," he muttered, pulling his hand back, as though he _had_ been burned.

She giggled. "My skin is hotter than a normal person's… but it doesn't become superheated until I'm either extremely pissed or usin' my power at such strength that I can't divert energy to keeping it cool."

Curious, Schuldig leaned over and kissed her cheek. She jumped and stared at him, eyes wide and startled as he chuckled.

"Just testing! You feel like you've a terrible fever, liebchen," he said.

She shrugged. "Yeah. My body temp is about forty Celsius."

Ken's eyes widened. "_Forty_? That would get you sent to a hospital!" he cried.

"Believe me, it's happened." She turned and looked at the telepath. "And watch your mouth. In _every_ sense."

"No fun at all. You're just as bad as Brad, honestly. All Americans _do_ have sticks up their butts!" sniffed the German, crossing his arms.

Ken sighed. "Your idea of fun is pretty fucked up, Schuldig."

The other man shrugged. "But it's how I have fun!" he grinned.

Everyone was pissed by evening, when they awoke. They were stiff from sleeping on the ground, against logs, or whatever. They were hungry, they were being chased by a bunch of SWAT agents, and they were being forced to work with their enemies. Not to mention that there wasn't anything to eat.

No one noticed Farfarello grab Nagi by the collar and haul him off into the woods, away from the arguing and shouting. The younger man choked and yanked away, but Farf took hold of his wrist and kept marching onwards, steadily. While the boy was perfectly capable of using his powers to leave the Irishman hanging by his underwear from a high tree limb, he decided to just go along with the flow for the moment.

"What are we doing, Farf?" he asked in a blandly questioning tone.

"Hunting," replied the psychopath, pausing to sniff at the air.

"Uh, Farf?"

"Shh. Don't frighten the animals," hissed the silver-haired man, clamping his free hand over the telekinetic's mouth. With a mental yank, Nagi removed it.

"Why are you _sniffing_ the air?"

The older boy looked at him, frowning faintly as though he was surprised Nagi didn't understand. "Looking for the animals," he explained patiently.

"I _know_ that. Why do you think your sense of smell can actually _locate_ them?" sighed the exasperated brunette.

Farf tugged on his arm and they started up, following a game trail before the Irishman stopped, drawing them into an outcropping of bushes. Nagi repressed his urge to shake the other man as hard as he could.

An amber eye settled on his face and he raised one eyebrow disinterestedly. "You freeze it, then I'll kill it. Wait for a deer."

"How do you even know a deer will come through here?"

Farfarello smiled his eerie smile. "I know…"

Nagi sighed and settled onto his butt in the dirt, waiting for something to happen, and knowing that this was not going to be fun in the least.

Review. I really want to know what folks think of my Farf-and-Nagi-go-kill-animals thing. Personally, I am highly amused by it, but I'm a crazy sicko, so that's to be expected.

**Upcoming**: Omi and Nagi discuss sex (oooooh) and Omi and Yoji fight even more. Plus, see the horrifying Sculdig on…. "'Coffee. He drank about a pot of coffee at the last rest stop.'" But only for a little while.


	4. 4: Outcountry

**Warnings:** mild violence, swearing, references to yaoi, shonen-ai

**Weiss Season III**

**Episode Four**

When the hunters returned from their little field day, Farfarello was covered in blood and Nagi looked ready to throttle his friend. Aya arched a brow at the deer carcass—the hacked up deer carcass—that hung in the air beside the telekinetic, and Schuldig burst out laughing. A spurt of blood shot at him, spattering his face and shirt, and a new fight broke out, which meant that Nagi let the deer drop to the dirt, no longer concentrating on it.

"Our dinner!" yelped Miry, glaring at the boy, but he didn't notice as he concentrated on holding Schuldig back from a furious attack. Crawford shook his head.

"We can drive into town and buy food," he said coolly.

"We have perfectly good food here!" snapped the girl.

"No way in _hell_ am I eating some disease-ridden creature that Berserker caught!" yowled Yoji.

Farfarello bared his teeth at the blonde man, who bared his teeth back.

"Knock it off, you two," cut in Aya. "It's here, so we'll eat it. Does anyone know how to skin one of those?"

Farf volunteered, but he was shoved aside by Tei. "_Right_. Let you mutilate it some more? I don't think so," she said, catching the pocketknife that Miry tossed her and kneeling by the carcass.

Omi managed to break up Schu and Nagi, the former still seething and the latter smirking, and he looked at the now-blood-covered ninja woman beside the deer.

"Uh, what's going on?"

"You're new _friends_ brought us dinner," sneered Yoji.

"Would you just shut up?" snapped Miry and Omi at the same time. Aya smirked at their perfectly synchronized response.

"How long have you two been together?" asked the redhead, amused.

Miry rubbed her temples in melodramatic exaggeration. "Okay, everyone, _I am not with Omi_!" she yowled.

The archer nodded, crossing his arms over his lean chest. "Yeah, for the record, I'm gay," he added.

Several people did a double take at this news.

"You are?"

"_Omi_?"

"Whatever."

"Seriously?"

"Why didn't you _tell_ us?"

The boy deflected the comments and just shrugged. "It didn't come up. Besides, it's not like we stayed up at night braiding Yoji's hair and talking about our lovers, guys."

Everyone except Yoji laughed at this—even Crawford, probably with the help of the mental image Schuldig projected into everyone's mind of the Weiss boys giggling together in flower-printed pajamas and fluffy slippers, including Yoji with braids and ribbons in his hair. The blonde man looked positively livid, actually.

"You're all completely immature," he snarled, stalking off.

"Uh, Blondie, don't go far!" shouted Miry. "We're leaving in an hour!"

Yoji graced her with an extended middle finger before disappearing in the trees. The pyro sighed and glared balefully at Schu.

"What? All I did was let everyone know the image Omi's little comment gave me!" protested the telepath, raising his hands defensively.

She pointed at the path Yoji had taken. "After him. _Someone_ has to go."

"Why _meeeeeeee_?" he whined.

Omi sighed and rolled his eyes. "_I_'ll go," he sighed. "But Miry's coming with me."

"I'm bolting at the first sign of sexual tension," she retorted, crossing her arms and glowering.

Schu snickered. "_You mean, the second they see each other?_" he said mentally. Aya, who was overhearing all of this, raised a brow.

"Sexual tension?" he repeated, incredulous.

Miry rolled her eyes and looked at him. "Did you _see_ their little fistfight, honey?"

Schuldig laughed aloud and Omi flushed.

"Can't you keep your mouth shut, Miry?" he yelled.

She grinned at him. "Oh, go after your boyfriend their, Omittchi!"

"Here, I'll go with you, Omi," offered Nagi with a sigh. "Anything to get away from that psychotic telepath over there."

Omi sighed. "Fine. Anything to get away from my roommate," he snarled at the pyro's back.

"The fistfight?" echoed Aya, bewildered.

"Wow. You're blind as hell, bishonen," she laughed. Omi practically sprinted into the woods, Nagi close behind.

"So, which way did he go?" asked the younger boy, raising a brow.

"Uh…"

"Okay, concentrate, and try to find his mind with yours," said Nagi.

"I can't do that!"

"Concentrate on Yoji. Just think of him."

Omi blushed, squeezing his eyes shut and thinking about Yoji. Unbidden, a mental image very like the one Schu had gifted the blonde with sprang to his mind, and he yelped, opening his eyes.

"I can't. It's not working."

Nagi rolled his eyes. "You're too distracted by your feelings for him. Think about his _mind_."

"Uh…"

"You're a complete baka. Him. Not sex. Just him. Picture him standing still. Not doing anything. Just standing."

Omi tried again. He felt a tug on his senses, kind of like a smudge of roiling fury at the edge of his consciousness. Unthinking, he turned his face in that direction, trying to catch at the spark of annoyed confusion that marked Yoji.

"That way?"

Nagi's voice brought him back to himself and his eyes snapped open. Blinking, he turned to look at the other boy.

"Uh, yes. I think that's where he is."

"Good work. We didn't realize you were that strong. Empathy is weird. You can either do almost nothing with it, or you're mind can compete with Schuldig's, so long as raw emotional force is at work. It's an unpredictable gift," explained the telekinetic as they walked along, following the red beacon that Yoji's feelings provided.

"Oh…" He digested this bit of information, and then a thought struck him like a falling brick. "Hey! You mean you _knew_ our powers beforehand?"

Nagi smirked. "Would Schuldig have thrown a match at Aya if there was a chance he wasn't a pyro?"

Omi considered this. "Actually…"

"Schu's not _that_ awful. He's just a bastard, and sometimes he gets carried away with it."

"I'll say," muttered the older boy.

Nagi chuckled. "He's actually quite a lot of fun, once you get to know him."

The archer turned to raise a brow at this.

"Not _that_ kind of fun! Although he'd sleep with _anything_. The hentai…"

Now Omi chuckled. "Has he ever hit on you?"

The younger man rolled his eyes. "You should see him with alcohol in his system. He'd hit on the _wall_ if he thought it'd get him off!"

"I take that as a yes…"

"How far is Balinese?" asked the telekinetic suddenly, changing the subject.

"Over the next hill, actually… keep your voice down," replied Omi.

"So what is going on between you two? Did you guys sleep together or something?"

The older boy flushed. "No! Nothing like that. He just… overreacted when I left Weiss."

"Overreacted?" One dark brow rose questioningly. "Any idea why?"

Omi shrugged miserably. "He just flipped out. First he was really nice, desperate for me to stay, and then he started getting mad, and finally he was just cruel."

"Huh. You're sure you didn't sleep together and accidentally get attached?"

The archer blushed furiously. "You don't have sex with someone unless you care at least a _little_ about them!" he cried.

Nagi blinked. "Yes you can."

"You _can_, but that doesn't mean—wait, _you_'ve had sex?"

The younger boy snorted. "I'm eighteen and I live with—uh, never mind."

Omi smirked. "You mean you_ have_ slept with Schuldig?"

The telekinetic flushed faintly. "It didn't mean anything!"

"Whatever."

"We're not together. We never were. And it's been _years_—"

"You slept together when you were underage?!"

Nagi winced. "Shh! Yoji—"

"Yoji is very interested in your little conversation, please continue," said the deep, amused voice of Yoji. Both boys looked up and yelped, flushing. Obviously, the blonde was enjoying their discomfort immensely.

"How long were you listening?" yipped Omi, his face the color of Aya's hair.

"Around the part where you started talking about caring a little about someone you have sex with. By the way, that's kind of idealistic, don't you think? You're what, twenty? Aren't you a bit old for that kind of thing?"

The archer glared.

"You have to come back to camp, Balinese," Nagi said coldly.

"Not before I'm done talking to you two," purred the blonde, crossing his arms and smirking.

Omi pointed at Nagi. "He slept with Schuldig. When he was still a _kid_."

The other brunette rolled his eyes. "Who asked for my list, anyway?" he snapped.

"You have a _list_?" yelped the archer.

Yoji snickered. "Don't you, Omi?"

Flushing, the young man began to sputter. "I-I-_no_! I mean—wait!"

Now both Yoji and Nagi were laughing.

"_Excuse me, dears, but could you come back here? The pyro girl is threatening to burn my hair off…_" said a telepathic voice into everyone's head.

_Thank you, Schuldig_, thought Omi, relieved for the telepath's interference.

"_I'll expect payment later,_" purred the voice, only in the archer's mind this time.

Omi flushed even brighter, and Yoji raised a brow.

"Schuldig," explained Nagi dryly.

The reaction was not a pretty one. "So you _are_ sleeping with the enemy?" snarled Yoji. "I should've guessed. Little Bombay is fucking the Schwartz. How many of them? How many of our _enemies_ have you screwed? Are _they_ the ones on your 'list?' Tell me!"

"What are you talking about?" yelled Omi. "I haven't slept with anyone here! And what business is it of yours, anyway, who I sleep with?"

Nagi drew in a breath, wishing they'd notice he was still there during this awkward argument of theirs.

"When you've got your legs spread for the _Schwartz_, it sure as hell is my business! No wonder you're defending them! You'll set us up just for a lay, huh? Slut!"

"_I'm_ a slut? Who's the one with a different girl home every night? Who's the one who'd just as soon fuck someone as look at them? I've never slept with anyone you know, so just fuck off!"

"Is that why Kritiker promoted you? Huh? Because you were fucking Agumi? You cheap little whore!"

Omi's fist cracked into the blonde man's jaw, causing the other man's head to snap back. "Fuck you! You don't know anything at all, do you?"

Nagi winced and stepped back. They were still out of sight of the camp, and out of earshot. He just hoped he wouldn't have to carry back both of the Weiss kitties.

Yoji stumbled back, but recovered, launching himself at the archer and toppling him to the ground. "I know you're a slut! I know you'll put out for anyone!" he screamed, choking the younger man.

"I wouldn't put out for _you_!" snarled Omi, driving his knee between his attacker's legs. The blonde gasped in pain and rolled off of him, doubled over. "Bastard!" muttered the brunette, sitting up and rubbing at his throat.

"What the fuck is going on here?" demanded a loud voice. Omi looked up to see Schuldig and Miry standing on the path, Aya and Ken following them. Absently he wondered how the girl had kept up with the insanely fast telepath.

"Uh…"

"Right. Well, you're the one who just sent his balls into his kidneys, so you get to carry him," growled Miry.

"He started it!"

"Do we look like we _care_ who started it?" demanded Aya, skidding to a halt. A cloud of dirt rose, making Omi and Yoji cough miserably.

"If you two are going to act like a couple of assholes, we're going to treat you like that," added Ken. The four of them stared down menacingly.

"Get up. We're going back to camp. If you two cause any more trouble, we'll tie you up," said Aya, turning away.

Schu smirked. "And we'll make you eat the section that Miry cooked," he put in, earning a smack from the girl. He retaliated by pinching her butt, and they fought down the pathway, earning a glance from Ken, who quickly looked away.

"You were right to call Schuldig, Nagi," said the soccer player, turning his brown eyes on the telekinetic.

The other boy sighed. "I didn't feel like carrying them," he answered, following the others as Ken helped Omi to his feet before the younger man gingerly hefted Yoji onto his shoulder, getting a kick in the back for his troubles. Fortunately, the archer was too smart to let the blonde's feet dangle by his groin.

On the road again. Crawford sighed as he listened to Miry and Schuldig behave like childish idiots in the backseat, doing the sort of flirtatious fighting he'd thought most people left behind in high school. He hoped that Schu nailed her soon and got it out of his system.

"_Oh, Bradley, you are too kind!_" smirked the nasal voice of his German teammate in his mind.

"_Don't mention it,_" answered the American man sarcastically. He sighed again and looked out the window at the passing scenery. Behind the wheel, Aya glanced at him questioningly.

"How long did you guys know about our powers?" asked the redhead.

Crawford shrugged. "Not long. It takes deep telepathic probing to find buried things like your powers, and Schuldig never bothered that with you guys. Besides, you don't have enough talent to be a threat."

Aya snorted. "I can still hack you to bits with my katana, you know."

"I meant psychic talent. Baka."

"You're as childish as you accuse everyone else of being," yelled Schuldig from the backseat. "And you say _I_'m immature!"

Miry flicked his ear, and Crawford felt himself warming to her for a moment. "You're a lot worse than _that_, dickhead," she said saucily.

"Oooh, Crawford likes Miry!" yowled the telepath.

The pre-cog rolled his eyes. "What did you drink today?"

"Uh… nothing, really."

"Coffee. He drank about a pot of coffee at the last rest stop," explained the pyro.

Aya snickered. "At least _I_'m not sitting with him."

"Feh. How about if I burn all your clothes off next time you're talkin' to _Tei_?" threatened the girl, folding her arms.

Crawford sighed for the third time. No, she really wasn't so much better than the others. She just smacked Schuldig around more readily. He wondered how much longer it would be until they stopped and he could escape the idiots behind him.

Nagi stretched out in the backseat and looked at Farfarello, asleep in the passenger side. The other man had a nice profile, eye patch and all, with his smooth features, broken only by the ragged scars. In a way, his flaws only added to the exotic luster he possessed. Combined with the silver hair and full lips, the young telekinetic found it hard to believe that no one else had ever tried to get with Farf before.

"If you keep staring at him like that, he might wake up," said a bland voice. Nagi saw Yoji's smirk in the rearview mirror and sighed.

"Do you ever mind your own business, Balinese?"

"No."

"You're as bad as Schuldig, and you can't even read minds," grumbled the boy.

"You slept with him. I still can't believe it."

Nagi let his head flop rather painfully against the door. "It was two years ago. And it didn't mean anything."

"How many times?"

The brunette sputtered. "How the hell should I know? I didn't _count_!"

"That many, huh?"

Nagi flushed. "It's over. Actually, 'it' didn't exist to begin with. It was sex. Nothing more."

Yoji smirked again. "Did you ever sleep with that Shrient chick? The one with the bunny?"

"No."

"You sure did like her, didn't you?"

"She was… she was innocent. Like a child. I wanted to protect her."

The blonde wrinkled his nose. "Ugh. Another Prince Valiant, huh?"

Nagi shook his head. "Not like that. I was a teenager and she was cute, but I didn't really want anything physical. Mostly I just felt horrible that she was so alone and so oblivious to everything. Like a kid, trained like a dog to kill on command."

"Oh…"

"Question: did you ever sleep with Omi?"

Yoji's cheeks colored faintly. "No. Why do you care?"

Nagi shrugged innocently, the inner Schuldig in him grinning evilly. "No reason. Just wondering about all that weird tension with you two."

"He _left_. He was always telling us we were like his family, and then he just packed up and left us! He betrayed us. He betrayed our friendship."

"I was actually referring to the sexual tension…"

"_What_ sexual tension? There's nothing like that between us!" yelped Yoji, shaking his head.

"Keep your eyes on the road, please. And yes there is. You'd have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to notice it."

The blonde growled. "I have no idea. If there is any, it's completely one-sided. How was I supposed to know he was gay, anyhow?"

The brunette favored him with a bland look. "Oh, I'm pretty sure Omi returns your feelings."

"What?!"

"Yoji, you're attracted to him. Don't tell me you'd get that upset over someone like Aya walking off. Or that girl Tei."

"That's different! They don't think of Weiss as a family, or if they do, they sure don't act like it! Aya treats us like friendly co-workers, and Tei answers her bedroom door with a Sai pointed at your heart. Omi was… different."

"Because you like him."

"No I don't!"

"Yes, you do."

"I _know_ how I feel, and I don't feel like _that_," snarled the blonde.

"Then how do you feel? More than attraction? More than a crush? Are you _in love_ with Bombay?"

Before Yoji could respond, Farfarello awoke with a start. "Are we hurting God now?" he asked blearily, rubbing at his good eye with a fist.

Nagi saw the blonde man's furious expression reflected at him in the mirror, and he just smirked.

"Are we there yet?" moaned Ken.

"Will you stop asking that?" demanded Tei, waving her middle finger at a man who'd just cut her off.

"I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I have to go pee!"

"I didn't want to know that."

"Ken-kun, relax. Try to get some sleep, okay?" suggested Omi, not looking up from his laptop.

"How's their progress on us going?" asked the ninja, eyes rising to look at the young man through the mirror.

"Kritiker fired all the guys on that SWAT team that failed to catch us. Right now, their busy deploying agents all over the country in an effort to find us."

"Do they know we have a bunch of psychics helping us?" asked Ken curiously, turning around to look at his friend.

Omi shook his head. "Schuldig implanted memories of them sitting there, waiting for an hour, before they decided we weren't coming and got themselves drunk as hell at the nearest bar."

Tei smirked appreciatively. "I guess he _is_ good for something, after all," she muttered.

"He and Nagi slept together," muttered the archer absently.

"They _what_?" yelped Ken, jumping in his seat and hitting his head on the roof of the car.

"They fucked," said Tei blandly. "People do that sometimes."

Omi snorted. "A couple years ago, according to Nagi."

"He _told_ you?" Ken cried.

"Could you stop shouting in my ear?" the ninja asked calmly.

"Sorry. But, Omi, what the hell were you two _talking_ about?"

"Sex. And whether or not you had to care about someone…"

"You don't." The furious look in the woman's glowing eyes was enough to make both men startle. "You don't have to care about someone to have sex with them. Trust me," she hissed.

Ken looked away from her, to see Omi sitting stiffly in the backseat, his gaze blankly terrified.

"Tei! Tei, what did you do to him?" he yelled.

"Oh, shit. He's the empath…"

Omi was in shock when they stopped, agreed upon by the telepathic message that Tei sent to the others. Ken carried him out of the car, only to be half pounced-on by a wide-eyed pyro. Miry grabbed Omi's face and stared at it, horrified.

"Holy _shit_, what'd you do to him?" she shrieked, looking up at Ken, red shooting through her hair like a raging fire spreading.

"It was me," said a quiet, monotone voice. Miry turned to see Tei standing with one hand on the roof of the car, eyes lowered to the ground. "I forgot he was an empath, and…"

"And _what_?"

She turned away. "I remembered something. He didn't know and he got caught up in it."

Schuldig hefted the archer out of Ken's arms, kneeling down with him on the ground and putting a hand onto the young man's forehead. His jade eyes shut lightly and then snapped open as he leapt away, horrified.

"What the fuck were you remembering?" he yelped.

Aya walked over and put a hand on Tei's shoulder lightly, but she shook it off. "I think you know already," she answered coldly.

Miry went over to cradle her friend's torso in her arms, scowling at everyone, while Schuldig ran to the bushes and vomited several times. Nagi, Yoji, and Farf got out of their car, and Yoji's eyes widened in shock at the sight of Omi in his catatonic state, being held by the crazy (to his mind) pyro.

"What's goin' on?" shouted the blonde man, running over and dropping to one knee by Miry and Omi. The girl glared at him and hugged her friend tighter.

"He's living one of Tei's memories… and it's not pleasant, by the looks of it," murmured Ken. Schu staggered back from the bushes, wiping the back of his mouth with a hand.

"How do we get him out of this?" begged Yoji, reaching out towards the boy only to get his hand slapped by Miry.

"He doesn't need you coming and hurting him physically, asshole," she hissed.

"Miry, calm down," said Ken, kneeling by her and putting a hand on her shoulder comfortingly.

"Calm down? Omi's in catatonic shock and you're tellin' me to calm down? This is my best friend in the world, god dammit! And he's in some horrible situation right now!" she screamed. Her face was red, and water fell from her eyes, hissing as it hit her skin.

"Let go of him!" shouted Yoji. "You're going to burn him!"

"No! You'll just beat him up while he's out! Don't touch him, you bastard!" Her eyes widened and smoke began rising from her clothes.

"You're going to burst into flames and really injure him in a moment," said Crawford, "Unless you pass the boy over to Balinese."

"Fuck you!" she screeched, turning to yell at the pre-cog. Yoji took advantage of this to snatch Omi away and roll him out of reach of the sudden explosion of fire that followed her realizing Omi was gone.

"Ken!" shouted Aya, turning just in time to see both Miry and his friend get engulfed in flames. He ran over and reached in, trying to grab his friend, as the blaze died down. Miry was sniffling in Ken's arms, both of them wearing charred rags, but unscathed.

"Ken… is a pyro?" gasped Yoji, looking up from the archer he cradled. Schuldig was kneeling with them, grimacing as he tried to retrieve Omi's mind from the memories.

The athlete nodded, stroking the fading crimson hair of the girl in his arms. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief; they'd been terrified that Ken would be severely burned. Aya turned back to Tei, who had crumpled to her knees on the ground, hugging her stomach and rocking back and forth, and Farf decided to carve up a nearby tree. Unfortunately, he stepped in the lovely weed-killer Schu had left in the bushes, which meant that Nagi had to drag him away and clean him up.

"Gah!" The telepath jerked into awareness, sweating and panting, tears hovering in the corners of his eyes. "I can't reach him!"

"What do you mean? You're a fucking telepath!" yelled Yoji.

The orange-haired German raked a hand through his hair and swayed. Crawford moved over to steady him with a strong arm, and Schu looked up at his leader.

"Thanks," he muttered. Turning to Yoji, he said, "The only other choice we have is physical shock…"

"No!" screamed Miry, trying to lunge out of Ken's grasp. He tightened his arms around her and tried to calm her down, but she kept shouting.

"_Please, do something to shut her up! I don't care _what_, just do something!_" the telepath shouted into the brunette man's head. Ken winced at the combined feeling of having someone shouting next to your head and into it, and turned to look at Miry, doing the first thing that came to mind.

"MMMPH!" she squawked, eyes going wide as the older boy kissed her.

Ken heard a mental snicker as Schuldig turned to Yoji, pointing at the pair. "She looks shocked, now doesn't she?"

"No _way_ are you kissing him, Mastermind!" snarled the blonde man, yanking Omi possessively into his chest.

"That's not what I was suggesting, you fool. Besides, the way you're hanging onto him, the only one who can reach him to kiss him is _you_," snapped Schu. He was irritable from fatigue after his efforts. So much for that coffee!

Yoji's eyes widened and Crawford smirked. Somewhere to the side, Miry got her mouth free of Ken's and began yelling at him, but it was just noise to the blonde man's ears. The autistic shuddering of Tei, Aya's attempts to recover her, the struggle between Nagi and Farf over the latter's boots—his world narrowed to Omi's face, to his wide, blank eyes, to the tears spilling out of them, and the faint whimper that escaped the boy's lips.

That made up his mind. Forget about the way he'd walked out. It didn't matter. What mattered was that Omi—_Omi_, the most important person in the world—was in trouble, and he could save him. Shivering with nervousness (anticipation?) he lowered his mouth to Omi's dry, parted lips.

Upcoming: Farf wants to be set on fire, Omi wakes up (yaaah!), Schu bugs EVERYONE. Also features a hellish plane ride and a trip to the Australian desert.


	5. 5: Solar Flares

**Warnings: **shonen-ai, swearing, and references to rape/torture. Also extreme insanity/psychosis.

**Weiss Season III**

**Episode Four**

At first there was just a shudder, but then he felt the brunette responding to him, his soft tongue pressing against Yoji's own. All sound faded, save for the rushing in his ears, as he kissed Omi with greater passion, greater urgency, greater _love_.

"I think he's back now," said Ken, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah, but I'm not gettin' anywhere _near_ them," muttered Miry, still in his arms despite their shouting match.

Nagi snorted. "We could just leave them…"

Aya scooped up Tei and deposited her in the backseat of a car, climbing in with the shivering ninja. Crawford eyed them for a moment, then looked back over the scene: Schu, kneeling in the road, Ken and Miry still half-embracing, wearing what was the scorched equivalent of underwear, _maybe_, Farfarello pinned down while Nagi tried to clean him up, and Yoji and Omi making out in front of everyone. It gave him a headache.

"Farf, stop kicking! You stepped in _puke_, for God's sake!"

"Let go of me! And I wasn't aiming for the puke, so it _wasn't_ for God's sake!"

"I can't believe you, you little hentai! What made you think you could just shove your fuckin' tongue down my throat after knowin' me for twenty four hours!"

"Schuldig _told_ me to distract you!"

"Mmm…"

"Uhhhh…"

"Well, we _could_ also stay and watch," grinned the German, pointing at the way Yoji's hands were wandering over Omi's torso, an obvious prelude to some sexual act.

Crawford turned away from them and got into the car that Tei and Aya occupied, turning the key. Shrugging, Nagi removed Farfarello's boot and sent him into the seat of the second car, taking the wheel. Miry and Ken stopped fighting for long enough to get into that car, leaving the telepath behind with the couple on the road.

"Tei, can you hear me?"

"Yes. Go away, asshole."

Crawford sighed. He had gone from one set of idiotic lovebirds to another. At least these two weren't intent on screwing each other's brains out in front of everyone.

"Tei, please, look at me?"

"What do you _want_?"

"I want to help you."

Oh, God. This was going to be a painful road trip.

They were in Osaka a few hours before dawn, which meant there was nothing open. Nagi looked around, at the lovely Irishman slumbering peacefully next to him, and at the pair of pyros curled up together in the back. Apparently, Miry's anger at being kissed was not enough to convince her that Ken wasn't suitable as a pillow. It convinced Nagi that she hadn't minded it nearly as much as she'd played to.

"_Schu…?_" he asked mentally.

"Vas ist_, Nagi?_" was the weary response.

"_How are Yoji and Omi?_"

There came a mental snort. "_The minute I separated them, they got really upset at each other and they've been fighting the whole way… well, until they fell asleep. _Mien Gott_, was I ever grateful for that._"

Nagi chuckled softly. "_Tensions running high, then?_"

"_Very. They don't know how to react to what happened, so they're pretending to hate each other again. I hope this doesn't last…_"

"_Schuldig,_" said a new voice. Crawford.

"_Yes, fearless leader?_"

"_Is there anything you can do for that ninja girl? She's a wreck, and we can't risk anymore incidents like what happened._"

"_No shit. We'll have to tie Omi and Yoji on separate ends of the room and gag them so they can't scream at each other,_" muttered Nagi.

"_I… don't know I want to prance through that girl's mind… I could try, though…_"

"_Well then do that. I can't stand to listen to Fujimiya doting on her like he does._"

A laugh tinkled through his mind and Nagi smiled faintly. 

"_I could seduce our little shi-ne Weiss myself…_" offered the German

And then Crawford again, dryly: "_You'd enjoy that far too much," _before he 'left.'

The telekinetic felt very inclined to agree with his American leader. He glanced over at Farf, who had cracked his eye open and was staring rather dazedly at the driver, as though the haze of sleep hadn't yet left his mind. That was odd, because Farfarello usually woke up very rapidly, to be honest. He'd have a moment of disorientation, and then he'd immediately come to himself, being fully awake a second later.

"You up, Farf?" he asked the Irishman softly.

The silver-haired man blinked, shaking his head as though to clear it, and then nodded. "Are we there yet?"

"Yes. But we have to wait a while before the airport's open," explained the boy.

In the back, Ken shifted his arm around Miry and mumbled something about a foul ball. Farf looked at them and arched a brow.

"When did _they_ get so cozy?"

"You fell asleep while they were shouting like that?" asked Nagi incredulously. How could _anyone_ fall asleep during that argument?

The older man yawned. "It all sounded the same to me, so I just sort of… tuned it out."

"Lucky you, you can't feel pain," muttered the brunette wryly.

"_Oohh, Ken's being diiiirty!_" exclaimed Schuldig's voice, as he 'saw' the pair in the back through Nagi's thoughts.

"Not really, Schu. He's absolutely out cold," sighed the boy.

"I wouldn't be too sure," murmured the psychotic man beside him, squinting his amber eye at the soccer player.

"Then I'd really rather not think about it," said Nagi quickly.

"_Come on, Nagi! This is a golden opportunity! I can drive them crazy with teasing!_"

"No mind games, Schuldig?" asked Farfarello skeptically.

A mental shrug. "_Sometimes regular teasing can be fun, too…_"

"It won't get you laid any faster," Nagi pointed out.

That earned him a grin that he could feel from his telepathic friend. "_I've got my eye on a certain redhead, actually._"

"What?" yelped the boy, sitting upright.

A yowl from the backseat cut off any reply as Miry was awakened by his shout.

"Gaah! What the fuck? _Ken_!"

There was a mental snicker as Schuldig pulled off, and Nagi resigned himself to having to hear the two pyros argue again at four o'clock in the morning.

The plane trip was like something out of a bad movie. 

Miry refused to sit with Ken because he had been groping her in their sleep, so she ended up next to Farfarello, who spent the whole ride trying to convince her to set him on fire, just for kicks. Crawford was on the other side of Farf, and was growing steadily more pissed off, though he tried to hide it by reading his newspaper. Schuldig noticed his eye twitching, though, and pointed it out to Nagi, Miry, Ken, and Farf, which of course made Miry and Farf get more obnoxious. 

Ken was between Omi and Yoji, dead center in a painfully awkward and angry silence. He spent his flight looking back and forth between the two nervously, while they stole glances at each other and acted affronted.

Nagi was next to a very fat old man who drooled as he slept, and whose love handles dripped over the armrest. The slender telekinetic was curled up against the opposite side of his seat, terribly close to making warding gestures by the end of the flight. 

Schu was with Aya and Tei. He talked to them about healing, and thought it was pretty productive, something he often wasn't when it came to the use of his powers. But when that conversation ended, he got bored quickly and brainwashed a flight attendant into thinking she was a chicken. Everyone, even Crawford, got a laugh out of this. Well, except Tei, who found nothing amusing but killing people.

"Man, I need to get laid!" grumbled Schuldig as he walked off the plane. 

Nagi rolled his eyes, looking at him sidelong. "Don't even think about it. I'll throw you into the propeller."

The German pouted and gave the boy a pleading look. "But Omi's so _cute_!" he protested.

Nagi flushed faintly and moved away, aware of the mocking laughter that followed him. Damn Schuldig!

"Just my arm! Come on!"

"For the last time, _no_. I don't set people on fire!"

"What if they piss you off?"

Schuldig couldn't resist jumping into this one. "Yeah? Wouldn't you fry someone if they bugged you enough?"

The pyrokinetic girl glared at him. "You're no help! From now on, you speak to me in German, or mentally, so he can't understand."

Farf frowned. "You speak German?"

She nodded.

"You speak English?"

She nodded, and Schu used his limited English and his mind-reading powers to figure out what they were saying.

"I'm American. You?"

"Irish."

"What part of Ireland?" she asked, eyes widening faintly, and a smile of childish joy playing at her lips.

"Eh, 'bout a hoondred miles west o' Belfast. Why d'yeh ask?"

"Your accent… it's… beautiful," she breathed.

"_Nagi! Miry's hitting on your wonder boy!_" Schu cried telepathically, grinning inwardly. This had too much potential to pass up. Besides which, a fight between a pyrokinetic and a telekinetic would be priceless to watch.

"_What? Schuldig! I never—_"

"_Never had to say anything. It's all in your sweet, loving, _adoring_ glances._"

"_Bite me, Schu._"

"_Mmm, not a bad idea. But I thought you were loyal to Prince Charming here?_"

"So will yeh set me on fire?" lilted the silver-haired man.

Miry slapped her forehead.

"_Never mind; he spoiled the moment._"

Schu fell back to where Omi and Yoji were, a grin spreading over his features. They weren't talking, though they walked side-by-side and glared venomously at one another from time to time. He skimmed along their thoughts for a moment and grinned more.

_Does he have any idea how mean it was of him to freak out at me for kissing him? I saved his life!_

_Yoji…kissing me… I can't believe it! Why did I get so upset? Wait—why did I _enjoy_ it so much?_

_God, what I wouldn't do to kiss him again… and more…_

_Why did he have to act so tough and angry when I was shocked by it? I mean, I came out of this awful memory, to find myself being ravished by Yoji, and I was kind of startled! Of course it was upsetting! I had no idea what was going on! Why can't he understand that?_

"_Oh, Kudou, if you could _hear_ what Omi is thinking about you…_" smirked Schu. 

Yoji's eyes flickered over to him angrily, his face set in a mask of fury. _Out of my head, Schuldig! I'm sure I can guess!_

"_But you're so far off from the truth!_"

_What? That Omi hates me? Yeah, I know I was harsh on him. But I can't just take it back!_

"_Bombay, kitten, if you ever get bored of Yoji's idiot logic, I will be more than happy to…acquaint myself with you,_" he purred into the brunette's mind. 

Omi's shoulders stiffened. _He's not an idiot. Just really messed up. Oh! I can't believe I said that!_

"_He would be very angry to hear you talk about him like that, you know._"

_I love him. He needs someone to love him, and I'm the only one who really does… I just wish he could see that…_

Schuldig decided he couldn't take anymore of that sappiness, and went to bug Tei and Aya instead. A far more fucked-up, but less teenaged-angst-oriented pair.

"Hello, Aya, Tei," he purred, linking his arms through theirs.

Tei snatched hers away. "Just because you're willing to rummage through my brain doesn't mean I want you to touch me," she snapped.

"Rraow! You're a feisty one!" he commented, noting that Aya didn't bother removing his hand. He actually didn't seem to notice much, but that didn't discourage Schu. Oh, he could make Fujimiya notice him, all right.

"What do you want, Schuldig?" sighed the redhead, looking over at him.

The German artfully pouted. "I'm only looking for company. Yoji and Omi are a bit too tense over there for me."

Aya snorted. "Well, they have to get over it some time…"

Tei huffed. "Whatever. As long as I don't have to be near them, I don't give a shit."

"Aren't you pleasant," murmured Schu. "You know, you must be a real beauty when you first wake up."

Her middle finger extended, she moved to talk with Ken. Or just walk. She wasn't a very talkative person, except when making cynical, unpleasant comments. Or bitching. She did a lot of bitching.

"Don't bug her, Schuldig. She's damned good with those knives of hers," sighed Aya wearily. It sounded like a warning he'd had to administer many times before.

"So is Farfarello, but I'm not dead yet," grinned the telepath.

"Hn. She's also not a raging psycho."

"I heard that!"

"Don't mind him, Farf! I'll set his head on fire when we get out of the airport, okay?"

"Okay."

"Well, it seems our lovely resident pyro plans to set you on fire. See what happens when you bother a woman?"

"I didn't bother her. She offered to placate Farfarello. And besides," Aya smirked, "_I'm_ a pyro, too."

"I'd nearly forgotten about that," muttered Schu. "Anyway, I can pester whomever I want, because I always manage to come out on top." He smiled. "Of _everything_."

The swordsman quirked a brow. "Oh? Well, try and come out on top in one of Tei's angry knife rages. Then I'll be impressed."

Schuldig shrugged. "You're too proud of her. She's not invincible, you know. You've seen what they did to her."

"Stop that. It's not my business."

"But it is if you want to be with her," he persisted. This wasn't just for him, either. He had to tell Aya, and his voice lowered confidentially as he spoke. "Which, I'm afraid, is not going to work out too well. I checked through her psyche, and subconscious, and everything, and she has absolutely no libido whatsoever. Everything pertaining to sex is, to her, tainted with the memories of her past. She is incapable of sexual arousal because any sexual act is rape, in her mind."

Aya's mouth gaped open. "You—she—_what_?" he gasped, his beautiful violet eyes wide.

The German bit his lip. He'd never been so terrified by a person's mind. Farfarello was a lot more lucid and human than people thought. It was his inability to feel pain that colored his psyche and personality into a strange, semi-crazed thing. Because he couldn't feel it, because he didn't _know_ it, Farf had no problem inflicting it. How can you feel guilty about causing something that you absolutely cannot comprehend? That you do not have the slightest knowledge of? 

Tei, on the other hand, was far closer to insanity than she acted. Everyone was a potential rapist, everyone meant her harm in some way, and everything was some form of cruelty or degradation directed at her. She was completely paranoid; she felt no love, no compassion, and no dignity or honor. Whatever the Weiss boys had seen in her that made them believe she was still internally good, and cared for them, they had been wrong. Tei cared for no one and nothing, not even herself. The memories of the brutal murders of her tormentors were colored with delight, bordering on insane glee. Where Farfarello found killing amusing, she found it outright wonderful. Many nights, she had awakened, crept into one of her teammate's rooms, and stood there, with a knife quivering over their throat, until the tiny, beaten part of her that remained human pulled her back. And since the first time he'd encountered it, helping her at the warehouse when she killed her father (another kill she relished), that tiny piece of conscience, of humanity, had shrunk considerably.

Schuldig found the woman utterly terrifying, to be honest, not that he was.

He nodded absently to Aya, unconsciously tightening his grip on the other man's arm.

"I can't believe it," murmured the redhead. "I won't believe it! Schuldig, stop your fucking lies! I know you're just trying to screw with us!"

Shaking his head sadly, the German moved away from Aya. He wasn't in the mood to play anymore.

"Australia. Here we are in the Outback," said Miry with a grin, planting her hands on her bony hips. She was the only one grinning, though, because the scene they faced was one of desert. Lots and lots of sand, endless sand.

"You are _way_ too cheerful," grumbled Ken, scowling at the landscape.

"We're all going to be _so _sunburned," moaned Aya, staring at his pale hands. 

Schuldig snickered. "I'll help you forget the pain," he purred mockingly.

"Psssh! What's a little sun? Come on, let's go!" cried the pyro, infuriatingly cheerful as she hefted a duffel bag onto her shoulder and began to march out into the sand.

"We don't even have a map!" complained Yoji. "We'll die out there!"

"We could shoot ourselves. It's a lot more efficient," commented Tei flatly, surveying the desert.

"Actually, I _did_ think to buy us a map," smirked Crawford. "The nearest oasis is a day's walk from here."

"Oh, great. Just a day of _burning alive in the sun_!" yowled Nagi, uncharacteristically emotional.

Farfarello put a hand on the telekinetic's shoulder consolingly. "All good things must come to an end," he commented, with a bit of a wry grin.

The brunette boy turned to stare incredulously at him and shake his head as Schuldig and Miry burst out laughing.

"I'm a redhead. I'll look like a fucking lobster," whimpered Aya.

"Put more clothes on," suggested Ken with a grin.

"I'll get hot!"

"You already are," smirked Schu, coming over to look the other man over suggestively. He earned a glare from the swordsman.

"Miry, you should put a hat on!" called Omi.

"Keep your hair on, kid, I'm fine!" she retorted good-naturedly.

"Let her figure it out for herself," remarked Crawford quietly, staring at his fellow American and shaking his head. "We should get going, anyway."

Grumbling and arguing, the others got their stuff together and began moving towards a long day in the sun.

Everyone was sweating buckets. Crawford and Schu had taken off their jackets, and Ken and Farf had completely ditched their shirts. The pale Irishman was already badly burnt, but, as he was unable to feel pain, he didn't notice it. They all had red lines of burn over their noses and cheeks, some on their shoulders. Aya and Tei were nearly as bad as Farfarello, but they could feel it. Omi had his baseball cap on forwards, and had lent a spare one to Nagi, while Yoji and Ken tied shirts onto their heads, like Arabs. Schuldig had used his bandanna to bind his heavy, itchy hair off of his neck, and now the back of his neck was burning. Miry, like an idiot, insisted that she wouldn't burn and marched around in a strappy tank top, now sopping wet, and a pair of torn-up denim shorts.

"Water?" mumbled Omi questioningly; reaching blindly for the bottle that Yoji tossed him.

"Why are we going into the desert again?" asked Nagi, taking the bottle from the empath and gulping down a mouthful.

"Because," said Crawford, accepting it from his teammate, "Kritiker will never suspect we went into the Australian desert."

"I'd rather deal with _them_," whined Schuldig, finishing off the bottle.

"Are we there yet?" asked Yoji.

"I'd sell my soul for a pool of nice, cold water…" murmured Ken.

Miry blanched and paled under the sunburn that she was getting. "Water?"

"So would I…" Aya put in tiredly, running the back of his hand across his forehead. He had a fisherman's hat on that looked both cute and, well, cute.

"But…but… you mean you can _swim_?!"

Schuldig chuckled. "Mmm, just imagine them all wet…and cold, too."

No one could figure out who was blushing at this comment, seeing as everyone was so sunburned by this point.

"I'm bored," complained Farfarello.

"So lick your knives," muttered Tei.

Unsurprisingly, he obeyed her. 

Omi looked up at the pyro woman and frowned. "Miry, you're getting really burned…"

"Whatever! I don't believe you at all, Omittchi!"

The boy looked up at Crawford, who was trudging alongside him.

"She will," murmured the pre-cog, rolling his eyes.

Lalala….upcoming things get much heavier. Like stabbings, sunburns, yaoi, and psychobitches. Oh, and the cheesiest scene ever to be written… oh, the pain, the humiliation, but I can't bear to take it out! I LOVE Omi/Yoji, what can I say?


	6. 6: Gekido

**Warnings: **Finally, some lime-y yaoi….heh… but there's also some serious insanity, as well as graphic violence (I'm an ex-bio student; I list the organs that get f*cked up…)

**Weiss Season III**

**Episode Five**

"AAAAGGGH! It _stings_!"

"Told you so," smirked the black-haired American to Omi, who shook his head and turned back to his friend, who was sitting on a rock, her soaking camisole drooping down her reddened shoulders while Ken held her down so she couldn't kick or hit anyone. Or bite, as the ex-soccer player had found out the hard way. She wasn't a very good hand-to-hand fighter, as she'd relied on her pyrokinetic gift for fighting all her life, but when she flailed around enough, some appendage was bound to connect. Painfully.

Naturally, all Crawford was going to do was to sit and gloat at the blonde girl. Tei was as helpful as he was; she sat sharpening her knives, eyes hooded and glowing eerily as she watched everyone with a feral, not-quite-sane edge that they failed to notice.

"Why didn't you listen to me, Miry?" Omi asked, pressing a damp cloth to her cheek.

Nagi turned away from the others, rolling his eyes, and trudged the four meters and small rocky outcropping to the oasis pool, which had the rocks and a few trees to offer privacy. So he had no problem shucking off his tee shirt, shoes and pants, without a thought.

"Long time since I've seen that, Nagi," purred a familiar voice. The brunette looked up to see Schuldig sitting in the pool languidly, eyes half-closed. His long, muscular arms were spread on either side of the bank while the water lapped at his lean chest, and his red-orange hair frizzed all around his head.

He wasn't the only one there. Yoji was lounging in the other side of the pool, golden hair wet and limp, clinging to his face and shoulders. And Aya was seated arm's length from Schuldig, the telepath's graceful fingers brushing his shoulder when he shifted. The swordsman's shoulder-length red hair had been wiped straight back from his face, probably with his hand, and his violet eyes were staring upwards, at the sky.

"Not my problem," answered the boy, tossing aside his boxers and sloshing into the water, hissing as it came in contact with his burnt skin.

"How many of your team members _have_ you fucked, anyway?" muttered Aya, eyes flickering to the German beside him and then back to the sky.

Schuldig laughed. "Why do you care so much, bishonen?" he asked, flicking his fingers absently over the other man's skin.

Aya shrugged, not appearing to notice the contact, which his movement only increased. "It was a rhetorical question."

"How are the other burn victims?" yawned Yoji from across the pool.

Nagi pursed his lips. "Omi and Ken are working on Miry, Crawford is laughing at them sadistically, Tei is bitching, and Farfarello is… huh. I don't know where he is," he said, frowning. Where had the Irishman disappeared?

"You lost the psychopath," Aya stated incredulously, sitting up. His red face and tee-shirt-tan-reddened arms were an excellent match for his crimson hair, and the rising moon gave his sweaty skin a gleam that Nagi could be certain Schu was appreciating.

"_Damn right I am,_" smirked the telepath mentally.

"Fuck. I'm not going to sit around and wait to be skewered by that nutcase!" announced Yoji, standing with a splash.

"Yeah, we need to look for him," decided Schuldig, accepting the hand that Aya offered him to help him up. For a moment, the two redheads stared at each other, face-to-face, with the German's lips curling into a faint smile before Aya turned away.

"You coming?" asked the blonde as he pulled his pants on, eyes moving to Nagi.

"Give me a minute," he replied tersely. His skin was in agony, and the cold water felt wonderful.

"And if he comes after you while you're alone here?" Aya said, his shirt open over his chest and boxers.

Nagi sighed and some water spontaneously sloshed onto Schuldig across the pond. "I think I can handle it."

Schu yowled when he got splashed, using Nagi's pants to dry himself off in retaliation before he darted off behind the Weiss boys, checking out Aya's hindquarters.

"They're gone, Farf," he said in a low voice, closing his eyes and tilting his head back against the bank, letting his body sink into the delicious water.

There was a rustle in the tallest tree and a figure with glistening white hair dropped to the ground in a crouch, slowly pacing around to where the telekinetic was resting. One black-sapphire eye cracked open to watch the older boy approach him.

"Why'd you say that, hmm?" asked the Irishman, coming to sit idly beside Nagi, one knee propped up and one hand pressed into the sand, supporting his weight as the other one moved to brush lightly over the brunette's hair.

"Why'd I say what?" murmured Nagi. Cool water, Farf's hand, soft sand contouring to his body—it was perfect. He didn't need anything more.

"That ye didn't know where I was."

Nagi shrugged. "You're not the most sociable guy I've ever met. I figured you were waiting for them to leave… and besides, I could do without Schuldig yapping at me."

The psychotic chuckled and ran a finger over the line of his companion's profile. "I do like the privacy," he said.

The brunette closed his eyes and let his head sink back against the bank, exposing his throat to the Irishman. Most people wouldn't have been comfortable with doing something like that, but Nagi wasn't too worried. After all, Farfarello appeared to be in a pretty lucid right now, and he seemed not to care about hurting, killing or maiming anyone at the moment.

"Since when have you cared who sees you naked?" asked Nagi quietly, the movement of his mouth causing one of the silver-haired man's fingers to slip between his lips.

"It's not being naked that concerns me," whispered the older man, leaning down so that his lips brushed at the telekinetic's ear as he spoke.

The brunette felt his stomach muscles ripple in anticipation and he turned his head around, coming nose-to-nose with Farf. The older man's tongue traced first the line of his own lips, then Nagi's, his one amber eye fixed on the boy's blue-black ones. There was a moment of electrified silence, during which they stared at each other, when the caress ended. 

And then, hungrily, the telekinetic grabbed hold of the silver hair, fingers burying themselves in it, yanking the Irishman to his mouth and kissing him with rough, desperate passion. A scarred hand dug fingers (no nails, they'd thought to cut those) into burned shoulders, while the other one indelicately scraped over his chest.

Moments later, as teeth grazed down his sternum and over a nipple, as his hands fumbled at the clasps of Farf's pants, Nagi saw, from his tilted-back position, Schuldig and Aya on the rocks, watching in amusement (in Schu's case) and surprise, in the instance of the swordsman. But, after that fleeting hitch in his breathing, they turned away and walked off, and the German surprisingly elected to afford them mental privacy as well.

That small grace was more than enough for Nagi, who'd been aching for this long enough.

"So exactly what _is_ our plan?" asked Yoji challengingly, the question directed at Crawford but punctuated by a glare at Omi. The young brunette bit back an angry, obscene reply in favor of sighing. No use arguing with a sunburned Yoji who couldn't go in the pool until Nagi and Farf were done.

The American man pinched the bridge of his reddened nose and closed his eyes briefly; no one was in a good mood, except, perhaps for the aforementioned couple. Luckily, the rocks served as a decent sound barrier, so long as they stayed the hell away from the area.

"I'm working on it. There is always the option of disappearing, you know," he answered tightly after a long pause.

Aya stood up, glaring, causing Schuldig to tumble backwards from where he'd been leaning slightly against the other man's shoulder. With an affronted glare, the telepath picked himself up and tried to brush the sand off.

"I will _not_ go living on the run from these people. They've controlled my life for long enough," growled the swordsman. He glanced back at Schu and made an apologetic grunt.

"Yeah, plus the fact that they could try to get us using people we're close to…" pointed out Ken, shifting behind Miry and pushing some of her sweat-frizzed hair out of his nose and mouth, locking his head onto her shoulder to keep it out.

Omi raised a brow at this, but Schu's comment was quicker. 

"Are you implying something there, you two?"

With dull, tired apathy, Miry turned her face at the German and said wearily, "Blow me, Schuldig."

Which of course started up a verbal sparring match between those two, mainly contingent on sexual innuendo and references to small genitals. Crawford seethed.

What ended the argument shocked everyone. A knife appeared at the throat of both Miry and Schu, and everyone looked slowly up to see Tei, black hair tumbled around her scorched face, eyes glowing with something faintly insane, her body shaking with rage.

"Shut up," she hissed, looking back and forth between the two. "No one gives a shit."

Miry's eyes narrowed and the tips of her hair glowed crimson, a moment before the knife at her neck melted onto her burned collarbone.

"Put your knife away. PMS is a lousy excuse for murder, honey," she snapped back, always the cleverly obnoxious one, as her hand absently brushed away a few drops of molten liquid. Amazing how quickly it had melted.

"I don't need an excuse," sneered Tei. Two people realized what she was going to do, but only one could act on it in that instant. The linked bodies of Miry and Ken were bowled sideways, against a tree, by the sudden blur of Omi.

"GYAAH!" screamed the young man, as a knife tore into his side, going deep enough to slice his kidney, to sever a section of his small intestine, gouge out his appendix, and then to slice a tremendous, hideous gash as his momentum carried him sideways and down, rending him open to the hip.

A moment later, the bloody knife still clutched in her hand, Tei collapsed, victim of a powerful telepathic attack. Schuldig leapt to his feet, swearing in German, but Yoji beat him to Omi's side. Miry and Ken, who had been near victims, were trembling, and Crawford and Aya had just gone a shade paler.

"_Omi_!" cried Yoji, cradling the boy's torso in his arms, running his fingers through the sweat-slick hair that clung to his forehead to remove it from the perfect azure eyes. He was shaking all over, but not as badly as Omi.

"We've got to get him to a hospital!" cried Aya, as Schuldig slammed a fist into the side of the insane ninja woman's head hard enough to ensure she'd be out for a while. Crawford had sprinted for the pool, while Ken and Miry got slowly to their feet.

"I can stop the bleeding," offered Miry desperately, one hand igniting and her skin glowing faintly. Omi looked up at her, tears of pain clouding his vision. He saw Ken and Schuldig race after Crawford, saw Aya come over and dig his fingers into the blonde girl's shoulder, all he would allow himself of an emotional reaction, because no one could touch Omi but Yoji right now.

"Dammit! Do it, then!" screamed Yoji, his own tears of a different kind of pain. "Omi, you can't die! Damn you, you'd better not die!"

"Yoji… nnh… I don't… hate you…"

"Shut up! You're not dying yet! You've got a long time to live! Don't talk like that!"

"You have to move away a bit if I'm going to cauterize everything… Omi, oh, gods, this is going to hurt like fuck," whispered Miry. A trail of flame ran down one of her cheeks, and a pale thumb rose to wipe it aside.

"Don't cry on him. It'll give him more burns," whispered Aya, turning his gaze back to Omi. The young man's breathing was shallow and his eyes were glazed; the cut had shredded so much tissue, so many blood vessels, that it would not take long for him to bleed out.

"_Do it_! Save him, damn you! _Save him_!" screeched Yoji, his tears splashing onto the younger man's face, washing him over.

Omi's eyes fluttered. "I'm… sorry, Yoji…"

"Don't be sorry! Be alive!"

"Cauterize him! It may be the only chance!" yelled a new voice, as Nagi came sprinting into view, wearing boxers and the fading flush of rapidly crushed arousal.

Gritting her teeth, Miry plunged her flaming hand into the gaping wound in her friend's side. Omi screamed, his voice tearing from his throat painfully and his back arching up as pain lanced through him, a thousand times worse. Yoji screamed, too, and Schuldig suddenly dropped to the ground, curled into fetal position and clutching his right side. The scent of burning flesh filled the air, turning the stomachs of several people. Miry whirled away, dropping to her knees and vomiting.

Nagi shoved the two pyros aside as he bent to look at the wound; eyes closing as he telekinetically probed it.

"His kidney's been injured… and a section of his intestines has been severed. Shit!" reported the young man, eyes opening. Yoji barely heard it as the pain subsided.

"Oh, god, Omi, I'm so sorry you got hurt. I'm so sorry I hurt you. I'm such a bastard!" he moaned, stroking desperately at the clammy skin of Omi's cheek.

"I… I did like… when you…kissed me…" whispered the archer painfully, his vision blurring constantly from tears and pain.

"I—You're not going to die! Damn you, Omi! If you die, I'll—I'll come after you!"

"Shh. Don't say… that stuff…I'll come… haunt you…"

"_No_! Omi, Omi, please no! I love you! Don't die now! Not now!" wept the blonde man, lowering his face until his forehead touched the brunette's.

"Love you… too…" A slender hand came up to brush at the tears on Yoji's face, chin tilting up incrementally so that their mouths touched briefly, and then clung, in a hopeless, reckless kiss.

Nagi cursed, hearing their verbal exchange. "I'm not going to let your last words be that fucking _lame_, baka," he muttered, eyes glazing over and hand stretching out, his telekinesis pulling cells and tissue together, binding cells at the site of the worst wounds. 

While he could hold the other boy together, real thread would be needed, because the wounds were too many, and too severe. Tot had had a single hole in her chest, not even properly slicing her heart open. That had knocked him unconscious for two days, in such a bad state he was easily mistaken for dead. This… he could repair the worst cut, the intestine… but that would knock him on his ass and leave him useless.

"_Schu, I can't do this on my own. We're too far from a hospital…_"

"Fuck! I can't sew!" hissed the German, clutching at his hair in a desperate panic.

"I can," said a deep voice, a hand curving over the frenzied telepath's shoulder and gently moving him aside. Amazing, considering that the hand—and voice's—owner was Aya.

Schuldig bit his lip as Aya pulled out a travel sewing kit and moved over to sew up the boy's wounds. Sweat was breaking out on Nagi's forehead as he concentrated on holding Omi together, while Schuldig furiously forced some of his own psychic strength into his teammate, trying to save everyone from a terrible fate. If he were a Channeler, he would have been much more useful, but he wasn't, and he had to make due with slowly sinking to his knees, then to all fours, in the sand, unnoticed in the turmoil.

Aya's stitches moved over the broken tissue of Omi's kidney, and then to the muscles of his side, putting the obliques and the lassimus dorsi back into place, medical terms running like water through his mind. His hands faltered, but new ones engulfed them, took the tools, and he sat back, eyes burning. Crawford took over the task, the long flaps of skin coming together with the last thread in the kit. It was green, or it had been, but it was so bloodied that it was black-brown now.

Tei was bound to a tree, and Farfarello was patting her down methodically for knives or anything else, lucid and cold. Ken and Miry were working on making a bed for Omi to stay on, and Schuldig had collapsed in the sand, sweating.

Aya's eyes ached, and his neck was a bit sore, but he could still help the telepath. Kneeling down, the swordsman scooped up Schu in his strong arms, carrying him over to the pond, sliding carefully down the rocks and cradling the other redhead close to his chest so he wouldn't hit his head. He settled down beside the water, the lean man in his lap, and sighed, resting his head back against the rocks.

"Dammit, Schuldig, you were right. You've got no reason to lie…"

He chewed his lip and exhaled, eyes rising up to stare at the stars. He couldn't explain why, but he trusted this man. He knew that the obnoxious, loud-mouthed German didn't want any harm to come to him, but he wasn't sure _how_ he knew. Just a gut feeling that he was safe.

"Heh. You know, I didn't think I'd ever say this, but I… I trust you. You're somehow… perfect. I don't know…. It just seems like… somewhere inside you, you're a wonderful, good person…" he murmured. "I wish I could find it. I want to reach _you_, Schuldig.

"Schuldig. Guilty." His hand slid through the sunset-toned hair, gently removing the shades from the top and folding them, setting them aside, before loosening the bandanna. "I know you've done some awful stuff, I know you're a bastard… but you're not completely Schuldig, are you? What's your real name, anyway? Who are you?"

Blindly, his fingers ran over the length of the thick mane, surprised that someone whose hair retained a kind of choppy, spiky look could feel this soft. But then, without the gel and mousse and goop to use on it, after letting it air dry from the spring, Schuldig's hair fell down in loose almost-waves, thick and heavy, framing his face almost delicately.

Aya closed his eyes, shifting the telepath in his arm and feeling his hair-running hand glide over the German's cheek. His skin was overheated from the sunburn, irritated, and somewhat chapped, but…

"My name… is Gunther," was the soft reply.

Aya started and looked down, to see the jade-chip eyes half-closed, but looking at him nonetheless, under heavy lids and dark lashes. The angles and planes of his face alternately glowed and shadowed, in the harsh silver moonlight. Somehow, he was more beautiful like this, quiet, weary, without any chemicals on his face or hair. Natural. There was nothing false about the moment.

"Gunther?" he repeated softly, letting a faint smile cross his lips. "I'm Ran."

"Nice…nice to meet you," murmured the beautiful telepath. 

Ran brushed his thumb over the line of Gunther's cheek and nodded. It _was_ nice to finally meet the man beneath Schuldig.

Wrath coiled up, a poisonous snake, dark with glowing amethyst eyes. The fury solidified and snarled, evil dripping from its fangs and glistening like sweat. Like tears, as the tears ran over the pale, scarred, burned, mangled cheeks of all that remained human. The human needed to die. The soul, the conscience. It was meek, and beaten, cowed and terrified, but it was still there.

Pale hands clenched and unclenched into fists, wrists burned from the sun's fire tearing and bleeding under coarse rope.

The game had gone on too long. The human needed to die, it had grown dull and uninteresting. A broken toy isn't any fun to patch up, even if you do get to break it again. It's not as fun to break the second time. And others had done so much of the breaking, damn them. Rage had savored those deaths, nurturing the metallic bloody aftertaste for years afterwards.

The slender torso convulsed, twitching once, against the cutting ropes, and wires, and the single bright eye of the watcher opened. But it was nothing, and so the guard shut his eye again.

The pure angry hatred had boiled and festered and grown for so long. The human wept, begging for mercy. A weakling, like those others who had begged. They'd all begged. In a single strike, blood, red blood as crimson as the fool boy's hair ran, and venom stained it black. It spread, evil, loathsome, creeping and pouring, taking over the entire consciousness, the entire being.

Brilliant, shining amethyst eyes opened, almost glowing in the dark.

Tei was dead. Gekido was awake.

**Upcoming:** A list of Farfarello's medications. Yes, a list. But it will come into play later, so try not to skim it _too_ much… I tried to keep it short, tempting as it was to pump him full of drugs…. hehe


	7. 7: Lick Your Wounds

**Warnings: **mild yaoi, swearing, violence and a list of Farf's meds. Now _that_ is terrifying.

**Weiss Season III**

**Episode Six**

It was quiet. Crawford and Miry, as cultural experts and fluent English speakers, were gone, with Yoji and Ken, to seek medical treatment for Omi. Schuldig and the Weiss redhead, Aya, were off by the pool, stealing Nagi and Farf's spot for their own purposes.

The Irishman ran a finger absently over the brunette boy's cheek, along his neck, to his collarbone, leaning back against a smooth rock with Nagi's head in his lap. He sighed. His medications were running low, and he doubted that anyone would care if he ran out. With the amount of drugging they'd done to him, people often forgot just how bad he was when he had nothing in his system.

What was he taking…?

His mind ran over the names, touching them and prodding them as the meds listed themselves. His brain actually worked with machine-like efficiency when he was at the incredibly lucid point two hours after he'd taken his meds. Three times a day, one hour each time. And now, one hour and fifty-seven minutes after the morning dose, things were suddenly becoming angular and sharp, all traces of insanity chased away with chemicals.

Effexor. He took about half a gram of it… 450 mg. 100 in the morning 250 at midday, 100 at night. It was an antidepressant, used to treat people with extremely chronic depression and bipolar disorder. His last dose lay huddled in its bottle, a 250 mg pill rattling alone.

Loxapine. An extreme anti-psychotic, with sedative properties. It was used to treat instances of schizophrenia, and had almost immediate effects. This one he didn't have to take, only when he was causing trouble. It was injected intravenously every four hours, at 50 mg, when he had extreme psychotic episodes.

Diazepam. A sedative. Taken at night, at lunch, and in the morning, though he didn't like it in the morning. It helped him to sleep, though. 10 mg each time. He had until tonight to run out of it.

Seroquel. An anti-psychotic, meant to treat schizophrenia. Which, he had to admit, he _had_ exhibited several symptoms of. But he really didn't hallucinate. The truth was that he went into killing rage that he had trouble getting out of, and everything took on the taint of religion and death. And he hated religion with such a passion, the very thought of it made his gut twist. He took 300 mg of seroquel three times a day. It would last him another day.

With the same computer-like accuracy, he saw the darkened, hooded glow of purple eyes staring fixedly at him, and he blinked. The strange dark girl was awake, but he didn't know how long. That made him slightly nervous. He'd heard her stir about an hour ago, but that was during the lulling drowsiness that the drugs always brought at that time.

What shocked him most, though, was that he was actually afraid.

Farfarello had learned to recognize insanity, and to recognize evil. The creature staring at him was the embodiment of both, an unholy mixing of the two. Unconsciously, his fingers dug into the silky brown hair beneath his hand, clenching in a grip that made the boy in his lap twitch.

"F-Farf? Uh—Itai! Lego' my hair…" slurred Nagi, one inky eye opening to look at his companion.

The pale man—well, at the moment he was red—gently released his hold on the telekinetic's head, pulling him up into a sitting position with a hand curled around his slender bicep. His single eye remained fixed on the woman-thing tied to the tree across from him.

"What's wrong?" muttered the boy, still hazy from his exertions helping Omi. Schuldig had kept him from a coma, however, which was just as well. One invalid and a crazy bitch were enough.

"What's wrong?" echoed the woman at the tree. Her voice was harsh and grating, words slurred and a bit lisped, and blood dripped from the corners of her mouth as she spoke.

That woke Nagi up.

"You are," answered Farfarello coolly. The young man beside him made a fist, frowning, but stopped, clutching his head.

"Am I?" she asked, taunting.

"Who are you?"

"Let me out. I'll help you feel pain…"

The silver-haired man shook his head slowly. "Interesting as it sounds, I think I'll pass."

"Hurt everyone. We'll hurt everyone. Cut them up. Rip out their throats, eat their hearts… we'll drink their blood. Everyone. The whole world. Do you want to help?"

Nagi, who had been frozen in shock for a long moment, let loose with the only other weapon he had. "AYA! SCHU! HELP US!"

A sickening, deranged laugh glittered from her bleeding mouth and she tilted her chin up, exposing her throat.

"Just kill me then, why don't you? You want to… I'm the one tied to a tree, remember?"

The red haired swordsman came crashing over the rocks, stumbling gracelessly to his knees as a foot caught in a crevice from his hurry. The laughter increased, a disgusting and vile sound that crept like tar over everything it touched.

"Aya…" smiled the woman. "Aya, come here. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. It was a stayed strike, but the boy jumped forward just enough…."

Tears fell from the dark, glowing eyes, running over the red, burnt cheeks to mix with the blood. Her eyes glowed a bit brighter, and the young pyro stared at her.

"Shit…" muttered Farfarello, as he saw the answering amethyst glow in Aya's own eyes. He slid away from Nagi, pulling a knife from his boot and grabbing at the woman's chin. "Don't touch him!"

Aya's fist connected with him and he was thrown sideways, rolling over and onto one knee to see the redhead standing over that frightening woman.

"Schu!" screamed Nagi, staggering to his feet and rushing at Aya. The redhead backhanded him out of the way, a gesture that came too easily as the glow behind his eyes intensified.

"You'll never win," she sneered, as Aya began to untie the ropes furiously. Schuldig stumbled over the rocks and stared, in horror at the scene.

The Irishman knew he had only one chance to save everyone. One chance, that was all. His knife flashed outwards just as the first knot loosened, before she could move to defend herself. Even Aya didn't move, because, with the last of his strength, the telekinetic had frozen him to the ground.

Blood spurted out, and insane, glowing eyes locked with his, a horrible, sadistic grin curling her lips for the last seconds that she was conscious. Then she drooped forward, and Aya yelled, jumping back, as her hold over him collapsed, watching her throat gush out the last of her life.

Yoji was asleep, finally, his head resting on the bed next to Omi's heart, cradled in the young bishonen's arm. Their fingers laced over his neck. It was a touching scene.

Crawford had managed to talk Miry and Ken out of going back and murdering Tei on the spot, but he himself was feeling stressed, and overtired, and so he'd fallen asleep on a chair in the waiting room after telling the guards that the other two were not to leave the area for any reason. He'd given them money, too, just to be sure.

That was why Miry was now involved in a heated argument with a security guard as to whether or not she could go to the cafeteria. Or so she said. Ken came out of the bathroom to find her glaring at the two burly men, the tips of her hair growing scarlet and her cheeks flushing with anger. He didn't understand a word of what she was saying, or what they were saying back to her, because he didn't speak English, but from the tones of their voices, he knew that something was starting.

"Miry, maybe we shouldn't ant—" he tried, to be cut off by a torrent of angry words.

He understood her muttered Japanese about the foul acts that had created both guards, which seemed to involve the crossbreeding of their mothers with a number of animals, but she was far from done with the guards. He decided to use the one English phrase he knew, one that Schuldig had coached him in, but never explained the meaning of.

Grabbing her arm, her said, "Let os go fock now," in the same language she was using.

She turned, staring at him, her honey-brown eyes widening and blinking several times. The guards exchanged looks and then snickered, and laughter was heard from somewhere behind them.

"You know what you just said, Hidaka?" asked Crawford's voice.

Ken shook his head slowly, backing away from the angry look that flooded the girl's face. At that admission, she paused, frowning and pursing her lips slightly.

"You don't? Well, that's the only thing that'll save you, because you just said 'Let's go fuck now,' in English," said the girl.

Ken flushed. Whoops. Time to change the subject!

"Crawford, how long have you been awake?" he asked desperately.

"About five minutes," answered the American man. "I had a vision while I was asleep; that's why I woke up."

Miry lost all interest in Ken and went over to the pre-cog. "What is it?"

"Tei. The crazy woman. She's going to be dead in another fifteen minutes," he replied.

"Damn! And we didn't even get to help," muttered Ken.

"I can't believe it…" murmured Ran, eyes glazed over as he stared out at the sunlit desert. "I can't believe I fell for it…"

They'd spent the past four hours burying the body of Tei, and Nagi and Farf had claimed the pool for their own… purposes. Which left the sweaty redheads waiting their turn in the water at the far end of the oasis.

Gunther put a hand on the younger man's shoulder and rubbed it gently, restraining it to a brotherly touch and nothing more. "You wanted to believe there was something good left in her… that was why she picked you. Your mind was unguarded, and she wasn't strong enough to just grab hold. She needed inside help."

The pyrokinetic man buried his face in his hands. "I'm such a fool…"

"You're not a fool, Ran. You had hope. I think it makes you less a fool, and more a man," murmured the telepath, slipping his fingers under the young man's chin and tilting it up so that their faces were a few inches apart, violet and jade eyes meeting.

"Gunther, I—I'm pouring my heart out to my former enemy over a woman who tried to kill my friends and would've killed me, but who I _still_ wanted! I think that's a sign that I'm an idiot," sighed the swordsman, turning his head away glumly.

"We all do stupid things where feelings are involved," confided the German man. "That doesn't make the feelings any less real. And it doesn't make us any worse. Because, unless it's love, feelings fade over time. So you made mistakes. Big deal. We've all been there."

Ran looked up, a faint, sad smile playing over his lips. "Even you?"

Gunther leaned forward, closing the gap between their mouths for a brief moment, feeling a flash of surprise from the one mind that he was completely tuned in to, every second, and couldn't shield out. Not that he wanted to.

"Even me," he said, with an answering smile.

The harsh lighting of the hospital woke Omi up, and he immediately looked down to see the blonde head of Yoji pressed against his uninjured side, a warm, comforting sensation, like the fingers interlocked with his. His free hand stretched over to stroke over the silky hair gently, and he smiled faintly at the sleepy mumble from the older assassin.

"Yoji…" he whispered, pushing a few strands from the other man's face and rubbing his thumb over the cheek. "Hey, wake up a bit."

"Huh?" was the tired response, and the blonde lifted his head up a few inches off the mattress, blinking. His expression went from bewildered to ecstatic in a few seconds as he saw that the young brunette was awake. "Omi!"

The archer nodded carefully, not wanting to disturb the grumbling headache he was feeling. Painfully, he shifted over on the bed. "Come on up here. You'll get a sore neck like that…"

A faint smirk played on the blonde man's lips. "On the bed?"

"Yea… but… don't get any ideas. I'm still pretty sore…" replied the boy with an answering grin. 

Not needing to be told twice, the lanky smoker kicked off his shoes and slid under the sheet on his side, nuzzling his face into Omi's neck and slipping an arm beneath his back, one hand lying on his chest, well away from the newly-stitched wound. For his part, the brunette rested his far hand on top of Yoji's and the other arm wound around his… lover's waist. His lover?

"Mmm, you're warm…" murmured the blonde, cuddling closer and slinging a leg across Omi's.

"Yoji…?" whispered the archer, a faint frown creasing his forehead.

"Hmm?"

"Did you… mean that? About loving me?"

The older man raised his head up, staring at the boy with curious green eyes across the space of a few inches, over their shared pillow. "I've never meant anything more in my life," he replied, quietly but vehemently, before he closed his mouth against Omi's.

The kiss deepened, growing more fiercely passionate as their lips and tongues pressed each other, their hands shifting and wandering. Omi arched against Yoji slightly and then broke away, wincing and panting faintly, a hand clamped over his side.

"Gaah! I… I love you, too, but this… still hurts," muttered the boy, hissing softly.

Yoji kissed his neck gently. "Huh. Guess I'll have to be patient," he smiled. "Sorry about that…"

Omi turned to look at him, face still faintly awash with pain. "It was half my fault. I shouldn't have tested your patience," he grinned.

"I just want to check up on him, dammit!" yelled a female voice.

"If he's awake, he and Yoji—" began the attempted reasoning of Ken.

"—Can't _do_ much, seeing as he's just out of surgery! _Baka_!"

"And if he's asleep, you'll be bugging him!"

"If you weren't so loud!"

"_Me_ loud? You're _shouting_!"

"Oh, who's shouting now?"

"Will you two _please_ shut up?"

"As soon as Ken lets go of me!"

Omi winced faintly. "Great timing, huh?"

Yoji nodded, wrinkling his nose, and decided to test the young man's resolve by nipping at his earlobe lightly, then sucking on it. Omi gasped slightly and tugged the blonde away from his skin, a slight flush crossing his cheeks.

"You horny baboon," he muttered, rubbing a hand over Yoji's stomach, under his shirt.

"Me? You're worse…" Leaning in to brush lips over Omi's throat.

"Am not…" Flicking fingertips over the blonde's strong chest.

"Are too." Running a hand beneath the hem of the hospital gown, over the archer's thigh.

Before it could degenerate into a combination childish argument and petting contest, Crawford, Ken, and Miry burst in the door. The two men on the bed quickly snatched their hands away, grateful for the cover of the sheet over them.

Crawford cocked an eyebrow. "Comfortable?" he asked with a smirk.

Yoji gave him a dazzling grin. "Very."

Ken blushed a bit, embarrassed by the public display of affection. Well, semi-public. Miry snickered. "Yeah, all it took for ya to get it together was bein' _stabbed_," she muttered. Ken smacked her arm and she smacked him back, and a moment later a full-on slap fight had begun.

"Well, anytime you're ready to leave, so I can be done _babysitting_," quipped the pre-cog, eyeing the pair of pyros as they fought.

Unable to resist, Omi said, "You know, they kind of remind me of _us_, Yoji."

Miry stopped, mid-dodge, and got whacked in the face. "_You_? The lovebirds? Who were at each other's throats, like, _yesterday_?" She didn't appear to notice the large red handprint forming on her cheek, and Ken took the opportunity to step behind Crawford.

"I could stab one of you. That might help," offered the blonde man with an evil grin.

"Hell no," said Crawford. "If anyone gets to stab those idiots, it's me. I've been stuck in a waiting room with them for almost ten hours."

"You were asleep for nine of them!" protested Ken.

"Yes, and your childish behavior haunted my dreams," replied the pre-cog seriously.

Miry glared at him sulkily, looking more like a five-year-old being scolded than anything else. "You're such a bitch, Bradley."

"Schuldig. I knew you were spending too much time with that idiot," muttered Crawford, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Ken sighed and flopped over Yoji and Omi's legs, making both of them yowl in protest.

"Hey, you guys have a _bed_!" he retorted, glowering at them. As an afterthought he added, "And someone to cuddle with."

Omi silently pointed at Miry, who was engaged in a staring contest with Crawford. Or would have been, had he not been ignoring her entirely. Ken blushed.

"Do you know what that boy said to her in front of the security guards?" said the American man suddenly.

"No! Nonononono!" yelped Miry, lunging at him. He sidestepped her and she crashed to the floor.

"Don't say it!" begged Ken at the same time, sitting up so that all his weight was on Omi's right foot, getting kicked by the left one for it.

"He said, in English, 'Let's go fuck now,'" announced the pre-cog with a satisfied smile.

Both of them dropped their heads to their hands, and Ken's ears practically glowed with embarrassment.

"Whoa!" laughed Yoji. "Moving pretty quick there, huh, Kenken?"

"Shut up!" mumbled the brunette from the confines of his hands.

Agumi stalked out of the airport, surrounded by an entourage of bodyguards and secretaries, feeling a compelling need to kill something. Actually, several things. Weiss, Schwartz, and those two traitors, Bombay and Hellcat. Who gave a shit what their real names were, anyway?

"Sir, our computer expert just found records for an Omi Tsukyono being checked in to a hospital two days ago. Apparently he had severe lacerations to his side, and was accompanied by four people, two English-speakers matching the descriptions of Oracle and Hellcat, as well as two foreigners who matched the descriptions of Siberian and Balinese. Oracle, Hellcat and Siberian have apparently checked in to the only hotel in that town," said Birman, stepping up alongside him and keeping pace.

"What about the others? The remaining members of Schwartz and Weiss?" demanded Agumi.

"We checked the database of the hotel. Abyssinian, Prodigy, Berserker and Mastermind all joined their teammates there, but there has been no sign of the Weiss psychic, Siamese. Cross-references have shown that she has not been spotted anywhere in a surrounding radius of ten miles, not even at the nearby oasis. That's the one thing we're still worried about," answered the brunette woman with a faint frown.

"What the hell could she be doing?"

"Perhaps she's hiding out, and they're expecting us."

"Perhaps. Or, perhaps, she's left them. She always was more independent than the others."

"True, sir, but not as much as Bombay. And he's remained with them."

"Well, he and that secretary of his that he's fucking," growled Agumi. He adjusted the overpriced Prada shades on his nose and stepped in to the jeep they'd rented. "What's the name of this town they're at?"

"Sandstone. It's about fifteen miles south."

"Good. Now ends Weiss and all of our problems."

**Upcoming: **a gunfight. A really hot day. And lots more implied yaoi…. XD


	8. 8: Icing on the Cake

**Warnings:**masturbation jokes, non-explicit yaoi, mind tricks, graphic violence, dying, and the end of this thing. At last!

**Weiss Season III**

**Episode Seven**

Ran was flopped on the floor, wearing his boxers and a tee shirt, sweating like he'd never sweated before. It was horrible, wretched weather, too hot to do anything but lie there. His red hair was dark with sweat, sticking to his forehead and cheeks, and, while his sunburn was healing, there were patches of peeling skin everywhere on his body, a distinctly unpleasant sight.

"Aya?" asked the familiar, weary voice of Ken. The soccer player had his outstretched feet nearly touching those of Ran on one side and Gunther on the other.

"Hn?" he asked vaguely, wondering if humans melted.

"What are we gonna do about Kritiker?"

"Can't think about that now…" muttered the redhead, peeling a large slice of flesh from his shoulder. Above them, on the couch, Miry winced.

"Gross, Ayaaaaa," she whined. She was slightly better able to stand the weather than the others, being a stronger pyro, and she _had_, to her credit, been teaching them a little about their powers at night, when it was cooler. But even she was affected by the dizzying heat.

"Hm?" asked the near-unconscious German beside Ran, rolling his head to one side and looking at the young man. "That's… not good… for you…"

"Schu, you look really sick!" commented the girl, frowning.

The other boys looked at the telepath, whose skin was pale and ashy, eyes glassy. He was shaking ever so slightly, dressed in nothing but his own sweat-damp boxer-briefs, and would have looked amazingly sexy, all slick and glistening like that, if he didn't look so ill. Ran sat up on his elbow as Miry crashed off the couch and came to lean over his legs in an effort to check on Gunther.

"He's got heatstroke!" exclaimed Ken, recognizing the symptoms.

"So… so… dizzy," slurred the beautiful telepath, his eyes rolling back slightly as he tried to sit. Ran grabbed his shoulders and hugged him, despite the disgusting heat. "Ran… s'that you?"

The swordsman nodded and Miry hauled Ken out of the room, muttering something about supplies to help Schu. If he hadn't been so worried about the other man, he would've spared a moment's gratitude to the far more conscientious woman who was dragging the protesting soccer-player away.

"It's me, Gun," he said quietly, stroking at the sweat on the German's face. There was a faint thump at the wall and he heard some vague moaning. Farfarello and Nagi. Even in this heat, they managed to have wild—and very _loud_—sex. Ran rolled his eyes at the noise and tried to tune it out.

"Yeah, I know," grinned the orange-haired telepath, the glazed look on his eyes disappearing.

The redhead nearly dropped him, but Gunther grabbed the front of his shirt to keep himself upright. "Schuldig! You mean you _lied_ about being sick?"

"No. I just… played it up a bit," laughed the other man.

Ran growled faintly. "You know, I don't think that's very funny," he muttered, prying away his friend's hands. "I thought there was something _wrong_."

Gunther pouted. "Ran…"

The swordsman sighed. After that one brief kiss they'd shared, there hadn't been anything more. They'd just been friendly, like always, acting kind of like it hadn't happened, almost. Although they were a bit more awkward about physical contact. Grabbing the telepath just now was all there had been since that incident, two days before.

"Don't pout at me! You tricked all of us," grumbled Ran, scowling slightly.

"No, I didn't. Just you… and Ken, by default… he's kind of dumb, isn't he?"

A pale hand ran through blood red hair, and the pyro-gifted young man rolled his eyes. "I won't deny that he's not the brightest crayon in the box…" he muttered. "But—wait, what are he and Miry doing, then?"

Closing his eyes, Gunther suddenly grinned. "Eating ice. On the table."

"Huh?"

"It pisses Brad off when people don't go to their rooms to have sex…"

"_What_?" Ran jumped to his feet, horrified.

Gunther laughed and looked up at him, head resting on the floorboards. "Although I'm sure Farf and Nagi and their rabbit-like libido do, too."

The redhead sank to the couch, dazed. "Is _everyone_ having sex right now?"

"We aren't," pointed out the telepath, with a catlike grin.

Ran glared at him. "_Besides_ us—and the answer is 'no,' by the way."

"Omi's not able to do much in the way of physical strain… although that basically just rules out athletic sex…"

"Would you _please_ shut up?"

"Brad's not. He's just…" suddenly the German man laughed, loudly enough that there was a pause in the noise from beyond the wall. "Brad's jerking off!" he crowed.

Ran wanted to die. _Maybe if I go and interrupt Ken and Miry? They can't be that far along…_he thought.

"His boxers are around his ankles," commented Gunther, bringing a flush across the pyro's face. "So that leaves us as the only people not involved in some sexual activity…"

"For the last time, _no_!" yelled Ran, storming out of the room.

Crawford was sitting on the porch-like construct that served as a balcony, wearing a loose shirt and shorts. Undignified as such clothing may have been, it was far more undignified to pass out due to the heat and have to be lugged to the hospital. His head was swimming as he tried, desperately, to access his power. Nagi had barely been able to lift a cup of water after draining himself to help Omi, and Schuldig was no longer able to keep voices out. They were all suffering, but he was the worst off.

A noise behind him snapped him out of the trancelike state he'd been in, and he turned to see a white-faced Aya turning away very quickly.

"What _is_ it?" he demanded irritably.

"Nothing, uh, sorry I… interrupted…" muttered the redhead.

"Interrupted my trance? You damned well ought to be! It's all your fault we're in this situation to begin with!" snapped Crawford, furious.

"Trance?"

"What the hell did you think I was _doing_?"

"Um…"

"Well?"

"Gun—er, Schuldig told me you were… masturbating," sighed the boy, peeling a few damp strands of crimson from his face with a look of disgust directed at the hair.

"You should know better than to listen to him."

"Yeah, well, he was being obnoxious…"

"He is _always_ obnoxious. Haven't you figured that out yet?"

"He's not _that_ bad!"

Crawford frowned. It sounded almost like Aya was _defending_ the German telepath… which would have been funny, had the American not been so pissed off.

Before he could reply, though, a sharp shock went through him and he lunged, tackling the swordsman to the ground a split second before several bullets sliced through the air where he'd been standing.

"What the— ?" cried Aya, his head thudding unpleasantly against the ground.

"Kritiker! They've found us!" cried Crawford, rolling off of the redhead and dragging the younger man into cover, behind the wall.

"Shit!" hissed Schuldig, coming into the room and diving out of the way of several more rounds. There were several crashes and then Nagi and Farf came running out of their bedroom, flushed and sweaty, wearing… one another's boxers. The Irishman growled and ran back in to get his knives.

"What the _fuck_?" demanded Ken's voice, as he and the pyro girl came in from the kitchen area.

"They've found us! I don't know how, but they've found us!" cried Crawford, grabbing a gun and loading it as he ducked around the corner to exchange fire.

"What about Omi?" yelled the pyro, crouching on the opposite side and extending a hand to make flames blossom in front of the group of men approaching, shooting at them. She screamed in pain as a bullet sliced through her outstretched palm, eyes widening. The fire began to rage, uncontrolled.

"Just _great_, they injured the pyro!" moaned Nagi, grabbing a pair of guns from the bag. He was a remarkable shot, naturally, seeing as he could nudge bullets in any direction he chose. Schuldig put a hand on the boy's shoulder and the pair of them began shooting through the flames. A few bodies fell into the inferno.

"Can either of you control the fire?" shouted Crawford at Aya and Ken. The soccer player had dragged his girlfriend away from the door and was trying to bandage her destroyed hand. Useless. Aya, meanwhile, frowned and gritted his teeth, staring intently at the blaze outside.

"Trying…too…strong…" he gasped, sweat pouring off his face as his fists clenched and he tried to take control of the flames. He stopped, dropping to all fours and panting. "Can't. It's… too much…"

"Ran, I know you can do it!" whispered Schuldig. He turned and grabbed the younger man by the shoulders, raising him up and cupping his soaked face in one hand. "You can _do_ this," he said in a quiet, emphatic voice. Dazed violet eyes stared back at him, and the telepath leaned in, kissing the boy fiercely on the mouth. "I know it!"

Crawford looked away and tried shooting at a couple other gunmen through the flames. This was messy, and things were looking very, _very_ bad.

There was a crash outside and suddenly screams began to echo from the other side of the wall of fire created by Miry. Schuldig gritted his teeth and closed his eyes, releasing Aya as he caught himself with one hand on the ground.

"What's going on?" shouted the pre-cog. He looked around frantically, betraying his nervousness. 

"Where's Farfarello?" called Nagi over the battering noise of gunfire.

"Agh—he's—they—attack on other—side," grunted Schuldig, who was being held up by Aya now.

"Forget about him," commanded Crawford. "Take the fire down so we know what's going on!"

The redhead concentrated, gritting his teeth and squeezing his eyes shut, extending his hands towards the flames. They began to flicker madly, as the handsome swordsman collapsed to his knees, sweat pouring off of him. The screams increased and then a pale figure leapt through a break in the wall, holding a more slender, dark-haired form.

"Holy shit!" cried Nagi, moving as though to go after them. Crawford grabbed his arm and held him back.

"Don't," he commanded. "You'll get killed."

"But what about Farfarello and Omi?" screamed the boy, turning hate-filled eyes upon his leader.

"They can take care of themselves!" returned Crawford, pointing out the expert way the Irishman dodged behind cover, towing the young empath along, and then dove back through the inferno to emerge moments later with a lanky blonde form, which he tossed into the same place. A few seconds later, the flames snapped out, as both Aya and Miry collapsed to the ground, utterly unconscious.

Farfarello spun around to come face to face with Birman, one of the old Kritiker secretaries, and Agumi. His golden eye widened momentarily, and then narrowed, angry and dangerous. Nagi sprinted from the hotel, to be taken down by a shot in the shoulder from Birman. He flew several feet backwards, skidding across the dirty ground and clutching his pulpy shoulder in pain.

"NAGI!" screamed Schuldig, who had apparently recovered, pulling Aya out of harm's way.

"Hidaka!" shouted Crawford. "Come on, get your ass moving!"

Ken blinked and stared around, shocked, at the state of everyone. Crawford wondered momentarily how stupid the boy was, until, a second later, Birman's jacket burst into flames. The athlete stared at his hand, which was stretched towards her, and blinked, before frowning, gritting his teeth, and making the fire increase, exploding around the woman. She collapsed, writhing, to the ground.

"That's it!" screamed Agumi, leveling a gun at Farfarello's forehead. "If anyone makes another move, this psycho dies!"

Nagi yelled something incoherent, that sounded vaguely like 'You fucking prick!' But Crawford couldn't be completely sure. He frowned. He wasn't anywhere near a good enough shot to nail that Agumi bastard; Schu wasn't looking too good, and Ken wasn't going to be able to kill the man quick enough.

There was a moan from the corner and his eyes snapped there, momentarily. "Trade me…" hissed the pained voice of Miry. The American girl was cradling her hand to her chest, tears of pain trickling freely down her face, steaming as they hit her reddened, angry face.

"_You_?" Crawford almost laughed. Almost. But he was just desperate enough to try it.

He turned and stuck his head out the door, his body following and his gun dropping limply to the ground, where his toes connected with it and sent it spinning away. He raised his hands up to indicate that he was no harm, and called out to Agumi.

"Hey! We want to trade hostages!" he shouted. Blunt, straight to the point. But, for once in his life, Brad couldn't think of anything better. "You've already injured two of our members, and Farfarello is vital to Schwartz. We're willing to cut a deal with you and give you Bombay's secretary, in exchange for Berserker."

Agumi thought for a moment, and then trained his gun on Crawford, as Schuldig hefted the wounded American girl up and brought her outside. Farf tensed, as though ready to attack the man in front of him.

"Don't even think about it, Berserker," smirked the head of Kritiker, "Or I'll plug your leader and your telepath."

Farfarello made a vague growling noise in his throat, but backed off, as Schuldig limped up and dropped Miry at the other man's feet. She groaned, cradling her hand in pain. The gun lowered down to point at her.

"Traitors always die first," snarled Agumi, pulling the trigger.

Her hand hurt. It hurt like fuck. She'd never been shot before. She was eighteen, and had grown up in rural Texas. The closest she'd come to a bullet was when her father shot a water moccasin. Nothing more. But now, one had torn straight through her hand. There was a neat hole, beneath the bandages. Neat and round, edged with blood.

He was pulling the trigger. She had one chance. With the remnants of her energy, she poured flames from her body, out of her eyes and ears and nose and mouth, off of her skin and from her fingertips. The bandage hissed and crinkled to ash in seconds, and her clothes followed shortly after.

In seconds, there was little more than a charred skeleton with the melted metal of a gun on its hand where Agumi had stood.

She realized, suddenly, that the bullet had hit her, grazing along the side of her skull.

_So,_ she thought, _shot twice in one day…_

Omi yelled when Agumi shot his friend. But, before he could leap out and further injure himself, the man erupted into flames, combusting into nothing in the space of a few seconds. On the ground, Miry was on fire as well, but she was a pyro, so there was nothing to worry about… except the bullet that had just been fired at her head, point blank.

"Yoji, she's--!"

"Wait, Omi-koi, just wait," said his lover, holding him back gently. Not like the archer could put up much of a struggle at this point in time anyway.

Ken ran over to the pyro girl a moment later, and Yoji scooped up his boyfriend to carry him there. Nagi, on the ground, was being lifted up by Farfarello and Crawford. Schuldig and Aya had their arms around one another, staggering outside together, both in need of heavy physical support.

"Ow, don't—touch—ng! —my shoulder," Nagi was hissing at Crawford as he tried to bandage it. Farfarello carried him into the house, with the pre-cog and telekinetic arguing the entire time.

Yoji stopped where Ken and Miry were. The girl was severely burned, skin bubbling in places. It was a truly horrible sight. Her hair was singed from her head, and her face was covered with ash. The young soccer-player was levering her off of the ground, having wrapped his shirt around her hastily.

"Can you say something to me, please, Miry?"

Her response was a strange garbling of several languages. Schuldig flopped to the ground wearily, blinking at the girl.

"She's in pain… and she's cold…"

"What about her gift?" demanded Ken, "Why didn't it protect her?"

The German shook his head. "Gone. Maybe it'll come back, but…"

Ken nodded painfully. "Let's get her to a hospital."

"I think we _all_ kind of need a hospital," said Aya dryly, dropping to his knees beside the telepath.

"At least we're alive…." Schu muttered under his breath, leaning against the redhead and closing his eyes for a moment before they picked themselves up and moved onwards.

_One year later…_

"You know, I kind of like it out here," admitted Gunther, his cheek pressed to the soft cotton of his lover's shirt, and the firm chest beneath.

"You just don't like that there's not hordes of people to mess with," retorted Ran good-naturedly, toying absently with a strand of the brilliant hair fanned over him. They were lounged on an Australian beach—far from the desert—on a vacation with several of their friends.

A skinny, sunburned blonde girl yelped as someone splashed a bit of water on her and scrambled over to the pair of redheads, sand sticking all over the backs of her legs and her bottom. She grabbed their joined hands imploringly and shook them.

"Y-Y-Yoji s-s-splashed me!" she stammered, hazel eyes wide and pained.

The boys looked past her, to where Omi was berating his boyfriend for splashing the damaged ex-pyro.

"You're okay, Miry. The water can't hurt you anymore," said Gunther gently, pulling her into their laps and stroking her hair.

Ken sloshed out of the water, running his hands through his damp, dark hair, and came up to them.

"Mi-chan, are you all right?" he asked carefully, holding a hand out to her.

She grinned at him and let him scoop her up, leading her off on a walk. She was still unsteady on her legs, and her body had terrible burns all over it, especially on her arms. The psychic backlash of her extreme trauma had resulted in the ruination of her gift, and it had badly hurt her mind. Of all of them, she'd suffered from the worst injuries. Of course, Nagi hadn't been able to move his arm for a long time, which had apparently hindered his and Farf's bedroom games.

Gunther and Ran had decided, with Omi and Yoji, to stay in Australia, far away from any hint of Kritiker. They had, however, gone to Sydney, rather than that accursed desert. It took two months before Aya-chan joined them. To Ran's horror and disgust, she and Crawford had hit it off. They'd been together for almost four months. Omi and Yoji did get to tease the American man about being 'an idiot lovebird,' though, to their great joy.

Nagi and Farf had gone to Ireland, and from there, all around Europe. They'd invited Gun and Ran to visit them in Germany, which had been one of the better vacations the boys had had. Ken had, after a while of deliberating, chosen to stay with his old friends from Weiss, and with Miriam. Gunther had been largely responsible for her mental rehabilitation, especially the task of helping her brain sort the dozens of languages she spoke into separate ones, rather than one. Slowly, she'd recovered into some semblance of normality, to be sort of adopted by the telepath and his boyfriend. In many ways, the brain damage had left her in such a confused, childish state for so long, it was like she'd grown up all over. At long last, she and Ken were starting to edge towards being a bit more than friends.

Now the 'Blond Kois' were getting married—_married_—and so the whole group had reunited in Australia to celebrate. The 'Red Kois' were next, apparently.

"ACK!" cried Omi, as Aya-chan kicked him off of Yoji's shoulders. His hands grabbed at nothing as he and his lover splashed into the water backwards.

"Yeah!" shouted the girl, pumping her fist into the air enthusiastically. Crawford lowered her from his shoulders into the circle of his arms. "I _told_ you we could kick your asses at chicken-fighting!"

"I still don't see why Farf and I weren't allowed to compete," complained Nagi, crossing his arms. His pale koi lowered his head to the boy's neck and afforded it the same licking-sucking-nibbling treatment he'd often reserved for his knives. Omi and Yoji, who'd just recovered, looked over and just shook their heads.

"Right, Nagi. We're really going to let you blast us with your powers…."

Gunther nuzzled at a button on Ran's shirt. "Wanna go join them?" he asked.

His boyfriend caught his chin and brought him up for a kiss. 

"Hell no."

FIN 

Well, that's that! The ending was kinda tacky, but I was starting to, um, get a bit bored…. Besides which, I lost the disk in the crap on the end of my bed…..

But it's done now! So review if you'd like. Thanks to Kasra for lots of nice reviews!


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